Industry Prize, 3rd Place Winner: Twelve by Olatunde Osinaike
We’re all very excited to share with you the winners of the 2019 Frontier Industry Prize, selected by Jeff Shotts, Sarah Gambito, and Kwame Dawes. Today, we have “Twelve” by Olatunde Osinaike—a lovely poem of sorrow and blades and learning to be a man in the face of god. Stay tuned for our second place poem by ae hee lee next Wednesday, and our winner Elizabeth Oxley’s poetry on the 30th. Thank you to everyone who submitted this year!
Twelve
The first of my last best memories end in my grandma’s living
room the hushed mercury of a thermostat the comatose
of week-old carbonated pop and the caveat of yesterday all bullets
are sweat until they’re not until the sugarcoating of breath
behooves summer I know what holiday I’ve taken residence in
by the era of motown she blasts on the stereo if it’s gladys then
autumn if it’s stevie then jubilant sky gift-wrapped underneath
evergreen bristles tonight I’m tiptoeing around the thought of dialysis
while stars strut to temptations and when wonder chimes in I’ll stretch
the infinity of my tissues across the sofa’s plastic as if fragile as if satirical
we jettison joy like a refrain rising from the mossed floorboards up into
the attic bypassing baby pictures riddled with rows of teeth I don’t show
anymore it didn’t just happen overnight there’s a thin line between sorrow
and nevermind nevermind I was born with two blades in my back
///
Nevermind nevermind I was born with two blades in my back
a fistful of intent as many arteries as there are hours in a day
and less than half the cynicism it takes for a white man to pray
I was born a river of vetoes yet a river yet a proxy for confusion
when I ask my mother what time I came through the function
she doesn’t say anything I ought not to know I was born a trick
question in budding midnight it isn’t even technically correct
to give midnight a suffix did you know equidistance is another
name for joint custody for the fence for the ivory one might call
neutral even after an umbilical cord is severed a stump remains
after lunchtime gossip choices after natural disaster disaster
and after that who knows who’s to say we can spare the span of
this next second to settle for rain and call it bloom becoming us
who’s to say this world has a long memory and forgets anyway
///
Who’s to say this world has a long memory and forgets anyway
several times I’ve been several feet from men who look like me with hands
dapping up like mine would on the same dimlit corners I have been
stopped on I’ve walked miles in shoes a cop might think were theirs check
my pockets and you’ll find my signature smudged next to a certification
that says should the day come the earth is in dire need of melody and
there begins a body ripe for a chorus but ill a stratosphere of want a wind
instrument without the reservoir lacking what I don’t lack my organs
shall not be profiled the same as my pigment I’ve been numb and prepared
to give my whole life I want the cop to know a great deal about this
///
My whole life I want the cop to know a great deal about
this the benefit of the doubt notwithstanding
my adrenaline infused with decades of sentiment
not unlike preventive care this too a sunshine I have spent
conscious of the many cherubs wandering amongst
the lushness of hoods like mine the pearly gates I have
paraded past the promised lands pastured by shepherds
I have known despite stereotypes and prolific hypocrisies
sowed beneath our districts the statistics of happenstance
that I so often consider to be a glimmer of god
in the company of martyrs marginalized when in fact
they did not seek this mess nor the messiahs before them
///
They did not seek this mess nor the messiahs before them I can attest that men learn
to play men from men still learning lord forgive me for the times I have said give me
a sign when I meant let the dark of my eyes see light the way a harbor can pardon even
the most vicious tidals ushering forth the stench of debris and ruin and not call it ruined
nor name it irreparable to the degree that there no longer exist a good within that body
of water there are over fifty synonyms for body of water I have found in thesauri none
of which include heaven and why is that surely there are enough bodies that have been turned toward that coast surely there is more than enough good I’ve lived long enough to have seen it be christened sound or wash or reservoir or mere or kill or run or draw or
burn without mention of clouds or gods we are said to have been made in the image
and likeness of so say the confessions that have come before me saying I asymptomatic to
assumptions of the profession of the water remaining a contrast when the hereafter meets me ashore I’d delight in whatever likeness the afterlife ascribes me to have been I’d pray it less
an erosion of bronze and more a trail of iridescence more hiraeth and a matter of wavelength than the splenetics of blues more what seas see post-storm in skylines vivid with the stew of berbere and paprika god as my witness I’d take anything resembling the warmth of forgiveness
///
god as my witness I’d take anything resembling the warmth of forgiveness
god as my bereavement as my sobering as my blackbird as my acupuncture
god
god
god as my overhead as my refund as my reprieve as my right-hand
god as my espionage as my inoculation as my winterdark as my thicket
god
god as my dreamcatcher as my might as my detriment as my palindrome
god
god as my antioxidant as my windpipe as my coalition as my crutch
god
god as my provender as my endeavor as my high rise as my awning
god as my silk as my lacquer as my protea as my redress as my hereditary
god
god
god as my ontological as my audible as my prodigal as my first responder
god as my airbrush as my amber as my cosmos as my candor
Olatunde Osinaike
Originally from the West Side of Chicago, Olatunde Osinaike is a Nigerian-American poet and software developer. He is the author of the chapbooks Speech Therapy, a winner in the Atlas Review’s 2019 Chapbook Series (forthcoming), and The New Knew (Thirty West). A Best of the Net, Bettering American Poetry, and Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has been selected as honorable mention for the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Award in Poetry, finalist for the Southeast Review Gearhart Poetry Prize and finalist for the RHINO Poetry Editor's Prize. His most recent work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in publications such as Prelude, Puerto del Sol, Winter Tangerine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and the Columbia Poetry Review, as well as in the anthologies Best New Poets, 20.35 Africa, and New Poetry from the Midwest. He has previously served on poetry staff at The Adroit Journal and is currently a master’s candidate at Johns Hopkins University.
