Literary Fortress by David Agyei–Yeboah

They say watch where you’re headed,

You do not want to displease gatekeepers

Tread cautiously, eyes soft

Whisper to the muses to pour into you

Then you’ll tower

Heck, whip them into action.

But before then, hand them this to-do list:

1. Milk and honey that glazed the cranium of

the wealthiest poetry prize winner

Crack that skull and sink it deep

Honey is thick, milk sometimes curdled

It will disrupt the writer’s block

2. Gather a thousand ants,

Crush them into thick puree and pipe

I went to an ant, a damn sluggard

And it told me a thousand would embalm

the cranium to be an impenetrable wall

Of literary power.

3a. Gather the lost spirits of hustlers

down dark alleyways all over the world

Round them into your crucible

And pound.

You have to be marketable and sell over a million copies 
 

3b. Tincture of iodine,

You want your poetry to last forever.

3c. Fit into a mill,

Add on strips of aluminum

Roll, roll, roll

You need to barricade your success from haters

Once your debut book launches

Open your eyes

The muses have done their bidding.

You’re a literary fortress.

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“I was unsure of this poem because it strayed from conventional African poetics. It did its own thing and I wondered whether it would be received well.”

David Agyei-Yeboah is a writer and artist from Accra, Ghana. He has work published/forthcoming in Literally Stories, Juste Literary, Afritondo, Deep Overstock, The Quilled Ink Review, Decolonial Passage, Ethel Zine & Micro Press and elsewhere. Dogs make him smile, always.