My face is becoming someone
Else every day, red
Bead in daddy’s eye 

After the crash and years
To clear that up, scrape
Screws and pins all rusted 

From his knees. First, a crash
Then, would he return? Answers
Days late like his left footfall, an off

Echo, the click-breath-
Click of crutches: daddy’s back.
Resuscitate the prophecies 

Childhood etched beyond
Forgetting. I heard those ticks
Quicken when they counted 

Down towards discipline
So young I daydreamed 
That I’d retaliate- 

Inflict further damage on my father’s
Injuries. So I threw myself off
Cliffs after a sinking 

Reflection. Dashed just as
I touched it, broke
Water. Before 

My pulse rang back to the surface 
Different, of course, rippling
Baptized. Because I feared  

That if he limped faster to reach me 
I would cause him pain. 
Because my knees pop when I run  

Away. A small firework
Of inheritance. Because I winced
The first time I saw him stiffen 

With sleep, lean into the stairs
Then crawl up to bed, three-legged.
Like it was Everest, breathing  

Thin air. The wheeze in every litany
On the loved body.
The fear that we’ll be  

Separate again detonates
Riddles the seams between flesh
And what beats beneath it.

Published November 7th, 2021

Tobi Kassim was born in Ibadan, Nigeria and currently lives in New Haven, CT. His work has been supported by a Stadler Center Undergraduate fellowship, and an Undocupoets fellowship. He won Yale University’s Academy of American Poets Prize and his work has appeared in The Volta, The Brooklyn Review, Zocalo Public Square, Voicemail Poems, and elsewhere.

Antonia Kuo is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York. She earned a BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Massachusetts, a Certificate in General Studies from the School of the International Center of Photography in New York, and an MFA from Yale University in Connecticut. Kuo has been awarded fellowships by MASS MoCa, the Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, among others. Her work has been widely exhibited by art institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, the Knockdown Center, RUBBER FACTORY, and Pioneer Works in New York, Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, Galería Breve in Mexico City, the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal in Montreal, Gloria Maria Gallery in Milan, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Gallery Vacancy and the 1933 Slaughterhouse (老坊) in Shanghai. More of Kuo’s work can be viewed on her website.