Not All Children Come From God // Poetry// Matthew Lee Gbigbi

 

 

Not All Children Come From God

I would like to think

You were hiding behind that cotton tree again, digging a pit inside your fingernails to bury the shame you'd carry all through boyhood. A subtle alarm, visible in every scene that shyly pushes you away from playing with us. Instead, you invest your little love In the sacrament of playing alone— Building houses with sand and singing praisesong for Spider, rhythmically: “Spider, Spider, build my house. If I die, I'll pay you.” When he said, “Let the little children come unto me, for they are sent from God,” You carved your body into a hollow of judgment, afraid to be set apart like your mother would set aside the evening food— for someone absent. When he said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing,” Your sins were yet knotted to the red thing that beats in your body, like it wants to jump out— to tell everyone: Not all children come from God. Some come from men who leave a child In their mother’s womb, tied with an umbilical cord So it won’t reflect in their home. A crime, he said, you committed— mother’s defilement, After you were created in the image and likeness of a man who allows passersby to name.

Matthew Lee Gbigbi, also known as Godhand, is a poet writing from Liberia. His poems have been published and are forthcoming in various literary magazines, including WilliWash Magazine, Spillwords Magazine, Kalahari Review, Enheduanna Journal, Madswirl Review, Sinkhole Magazine, Ikike Arts, Atunispoetry, Raven Cage Anthology, and the Soulful Stardust Anthology, among others. His collection of poems, "A Voice Echoing From The Atlantic," received the award for 'Best Poetry' at the Mulher Forte African Literature Award in Botswana. Matthew loves to read about and photograph people, places and things. tweets under the username @GodhandLee01