Ghazal in Nakedness
Honora Ankong
You wear the night like a too big jacket – swaddled in black body un-naked.
Exposed moonlight teeth bared & gleaming. There are things you cannot hide in this darkness. Resist the urge to naked yourself– the world bites like fire ants. How presumptuous of you to think you can walk into a poem and not get naked. Good women leave
some things to the imagination but you are poet so you naked
the world of its words. You were raised glass-like taught to screech when clawed at
yet here you are with a throat naked of sound. Aren’t you ashamed, Honora, of the way poems escape you? Aren’t you ashamed to leave the world the same way you came in – naked?
Honora Ankong is a queer Cameroonian-American poet. She is currently a Virginia Tech MFA in poetry candidate. Her works exist in and explore the different landscapes where her identities intersect. She is constantly complicating and reimaging the confines of the African Diaspora.
*Illustration: ‘the urge to naked yourself’ by Sef Adeola.