Sheepshank Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Like a rolled-up snake,
It lies, its head
Still sticking out,
Until you tighten it
Into a reef knot,

A stretchy rope of a river
Hurled off from a headwater
Narrowing into a thin stream
Veering off a slope
To slim itself down

Into a stringed dripping flow
Beneath a boulder,
As it ties itself up
Into the nut that must
Be cracked,

As the snake melts
With an unfolding scroll,
A bobbin growing
Into stringed beads of clay
In a tray of swamp.

After a trip
From the marsh swallowing
The ropy snake,
You find a sisal rope

Tied with soft hands
To float and flow
With no lizard head,
As it slithers around,

While lying
On the same drilled-in
And pegged spot.

(ii)

Like a corner boy
Unreeled to stray off,
His wheeled bobbin
In the street,

Spirals and curls of him
Straightened out
Into an unclothed worm,
A shipshank ambles
On elephant legs.

It creeps and crawls
With the corner boy,
Rolling wheels flipped out
Of his belly,

When shooting head
And body through
A cubbyhole, as a policeman
Arrives, lightning

In his legs, as he dwarfs
Himself into a crab,
And the corner boy slips off,
Crushing the brittle crab

For a stormy lurking trip,
A snare, mouth agape,
For a diarrhea of tropes
And slurs breaking flesh.

But if the worm
At close quarters spins
A hairy sisal rope,
Give it a shave

To roll out, a firm rope,
For a lianas bridge
To cross you over
To a bank of more sisal hemp

Holding together
Like Caulobacter stretching
Out mile-long baboon
Arms searching for a firm grip.

(iii)

And if the sheepshank
Keeps on opening
Its fat eyes running through
Its body of loose curls

And coils with no teeth
Or claws to grip
Its spine firmly,

Beckon the corner boy
To creep into
The firmest constrictor knot
That must not devour
The lad, as he slips off
And melts into cream air.