the making of a persona poem

By Chiagoziem Jideofor

• I miss home.
• I am old enough to have unleashed all sternness, wear out my leather skin.
• I am made of this dirt, mold a mother rejects.
• I’ve got guns, corked guns I am unwilling to show.
• I’ve got two huge arms that aren’t a joke.
• I’ve got a mouth set to go off.
• At home, there are bigger punishments for counting wrongly.
• Hunger is no little punishment.
• I fake allergies at every point of rejecting food.
• When I reject food, it is all a ploy to make my mother beg.
• I’d rather sit at the table all night than lose what little power.
• I am that black sheep.
• I have belittled attempts to survive.
• I turned my back on life knowing it wasn’t meant to serve me well.
• I keep waiting on myself, on all my other selves.
• I have this strange habit of always mouthing off.

BIO:
Chiagoziem Jideofor is Igbo and Queer. Her poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in POETRY, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Obsidian, The Lincoln Review, ANOMLY, the minnesota review, Michigan Quarterly Review, berlin lit, Variant Lit, Yaba Left Review, Passengers Journal, Superstition Review, Rigorous, Spectrum Literary Journal, Untitled: Voices, and so on.