In Nigeria our white lady
headmaster asked me to speak

to my parents about my brother
sounding like a Nigerian. Toxic

properties in speech, called
my blood separate from itself

like oil unprepared for the global
marketplace. So this is accent study for

a reckoning with what’s left. Me
and my brother are still the same voice

I put my hand in his teeth to feel the edge
he leaves unrefined then wear it

in red where I write. Some people
come and call us petrol thieves on camera

like we weren’t dipped
in black gold at birth, head to toe. Dripping

smoke from our homestyle refinery. Local
authorities spill our work back into the water

we drink, call our survival
their property and anchor it further

out at sea. My brother and I grew up
on opposite faces of an oil spill eating ink

until our vision converged. And swallowed
so much in the same slick throat, words

bloated with the distance that rushes in my open
mouthed search for you. I know 

we meet when it’s blood in the water. Not
money, not the braided shimmer of ropes.

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.