Swim

By Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

Who is human? What makes human the human? Why is human the human? What is about the liberation of a certain class of humans, those who fall in love with their own? Is there about the importance of family and the strength humans can find in relationships? What is about a certain tolerance that leads to human destruction? In this collection of poems, the poet is exploring primarily the human nature and the environment, and how love tears people apart and why environment becomes more and more unfriendly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224334803

Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

Jacob Kobina Ayiah  Mensah[(╥║│═╚╣╕╞│╬╕─╕╣│╘╘╞╚╕─│Ħ) (also known in the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota, as Sitting Mountain)], a self-made Ojibwa, Basque, Catalan, Spanish, gypsy, a Black African tribe and Greek descent and a multilingual poet, multidisciplinary artist, and algebraist, works in mixed media. His most recent poetry chapbook is Kind Haven (The Operating System, 2020) and a full-length poetry collection in Spanish, agua y color, is forthcoming from Valparaiso Poetry Press. His poetry, songs, prose, art and hybrid works have appeared in numerous journals, including JMWW, Constellations, New Note Poetry, Chapter House Journal, Red Ogre Review, Newfound, The New Southern Fugitives, Inverted Syntax, The Elevation, Moon Shadow Sanctuary, Passenger Journal, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Millennial Pulp Literary Magazine, Trampoline, 1-70 Review, Beautiful Cadaver Project Pittsburgh, The Meadow, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Rigorous, The Decadent Review, FOLK Magazine, Wards Lit Magazine, Cadinal Sins, zines + things, Juked, Juke Joint Magazine,  The William and Mary Review, Helen Literary Magazine, In Parentheses, Genre: Urban Arts, Roanoke Review, filling Station, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Indianapolis Review, The Sandy River Review, Blackbox Manifold, Cordite Poetry Review, Amethys Review, Rogue Agent, Whimperbang, Emerys Journal, Night Music Journal, Cantos: A literary and Arts Journal, Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Thirty West Publishing House, Aaduna, Terror House Magazine, Ygdrasil: A Journal of the Poetic Arts,  Castabout Art & Literature, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, Hooligan Magazine, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Otoliths, Oddball Magazine, UTSANGA, Pithead Chapel, Wingless Dreamer, Cathexis Northwest Press, University of North Dakota, Meat for Tea, Fireflies' Light: A Magazine of Short Poems and others. His works in abstract mathematics include Arthur Algebras, Haiku Algebra, c-Algebra, Ỽ-Functions, Nortan Group, and Epic Ring. He lives in the southern part of Ghana, in Spain, and the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.

Book preview

Contents   

Sui Generis News  Flight  Expelled  Engagement  Parlor Game  Poems, Adjudication and Subscriptions  Submission  Courtesy Journal   Library  Chapter and Verse  Troubadours Press  Patterns  Sonnets, Photographs and Sermons  Finish and the Fleet  Breakfast  Newspapers, Miscellanies and Independently  Pin  Newsletters  Paintings and Primary Violets  Pleasure in Horror  A Taste of History  Gift  Media  First Rehearsal  Dolls  Revisions and the Souls  People, Prose and Submissions  Exhibitions  Glossary, Archive and Spirit  Awards  Black  Cinderella  Spirit, Skill and Satire  Myself  A Perfect Sense     Comprehension  Bridle  News Bureau  Sonnets, Haircuts and Night Streets  Comedy of Rights  Weight  Burning  Trap  A Vision at Infinity  A Roman Numeral  Human  Resting Elephants  Vanity Fair  Subscriptions  Jacket Valley  A Face  Embassy  In a Certain Text Book of Mathematics: Principles of Abstraction  Lessened  Tuesday English Lesson Note

Sui Generis News

such  that beautiful suds  sucked under memories  are nothing now but cuds—

following lemon grass  to provide  symmetries  my secret to a lass

what passions interpose  without words or mysteries  are a moment, suppose

I am sharing shuttles  and everything here tries  the last scene  by battles. 

The whirlwinds have covered the hills  and we outsiders are complicit to see  yellow flowers blooming around cicadas

chattering, your meadows  are equal measure choking on fumes  after making something for ourselves.

But from vines to monoliths  from evergreens to graffiti artists  the lines are chiaroscuro behind any rapacious.

I own your boat and that reveals  these pure pupils at my endings  you consider as good grief news

this is the second red rose  from the forest behind those bells  the media take what it is

as essentially parochial issues  and place them as islands  floating between the fjords 

You practise Englishness.  I am sorry I cannot miss  such disesteem any more

I am tired.  He or she is  a roadblock ahead from marrows  I must find anybody filling with vespers.

Perhaps, empyreal Afghanis tans  I am now a Kabul’s.  No more to these chafes

I must hang my shirts  before I can hang myself with any sense  that has more in the mythic systems

It seems  abstract individuals  find themselves embedded within the inns  clearing fruitless midwestern patterns

and these remain the same pleasures.  I give up periphery for naught in nuts  because it is bigger in the sea

Receiving death threats  than dealing with alibis  or silly rejection slips

Performing this among adolescents  what viewpoint television takes  around or toward conflicts

is presented, giving its observers  to settle standards  in open fashions

That is why she goes  to Australia or Canada or mercy killings  again fork nightly chasm. Because

this refracted light between these  Bosch and Brueghel is  certain hues of visions. 

We all need one or two evenings  to complete those lives  we have with inner space or peace

Flight

All your friends have gone pass the goal after  waiting for dealers who lose their franchises  who are probably feeling parts maker  I carry an ample numbers, clauses  standards and procedures about merger  with genuine disagreement to power.

Immediately announcing your silence  which I am expected to support now  in respective attitude towards this trance  fights, protects a source almost bliss or woe  being the unfortunate initials  circulates the inflammatory broadsides.

It is not clear whether the sun has set.  A lane leading to the cottage begins  the discussions, reverses the gross or net  that seems to induce hysteria in its  opponents for the first time, your fate, let  adapt new body after we have gained the net. 

Expelled

My geographies are congas  the lyric remains in brooding

the less salted sea of dongas  I cross with mornings still breaking

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into new Virgin Islands  and the dispirited people display

white wine darkening