In a Poem About Flight My iPhone-XR Autocorrects Father to Feather

Poetry by Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí | From Issue 26 (Spring 2024)

& in the pale dusk light, the chitin of a black-witch
            -moth’s wing kisses the yellow of a burning wick be-

fore its fall. candle wax coating its carcass in a new
            kind of white light. fact remains: we’ll never know

at what point in flight the body deserts its light
            for ephemerality. corpse shrouded in radiant satin—

carcass coated in candle wax. only time a black
            man’s shadow is tinted white. on father’s day

i’m reminded i feature in no picture with you, 
            ‘xcept for pixel-bytes of withering memory lodged in

my mind. & father, feather that you are, volant
            & quiet in the mahogany coffin of the unfilled grave,

yet heavy as the consonant in dead—lips held shut,
            the cobwebbed mouth of a long abandoned mail

box. i envision you, a feather levitating in ether. Mortal
            body void of life. magnificent bird somehow stripped of

its song. how often a f(e)ather breezes out the door &
            into doom. dad? doe? either one fading into oblivion.

Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí

Ajayi Muiz, a young Black man wearing glasses and a long-sleeved black T-shirt printed with the words "creative genius," holds a lavender book under his arm and stands in front of a modern building, possibly a library.

Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí (Frontier XVIII), an editor at The Nigeria Review, 2023 Poetry Translation Centre UNDERTOW cohort, is a winner of the Lagos-London Poetry Competition 2022; University of Ibadan Law LDS Poetry Prize 2022, featuring in Frontier, Lolwe, 20.35 Africa, Tab Journal, Olongo, Poetry Wales, Aké Review, SAND Journal & elsewhere.

Instagram

Author Note:

My parents separated when I was eight. In the months leading to my father’s passing, I’d see him at least once a week. When he finally passed away, I felt uncertain about how to process the loss, the exit. How walking out the door (of a house) is a different kind of loss from walking into the door (of a coffin). I could only relate it to the flight of a bird, in flight (of its own will) while alive. Its feathers still in flight (directed by the wind) even after its death.