Diptych Daughter
by Omotara James
Heart
Because I wanted a father so much. I tried to make one out of what I was given. The way the
composer hears all the music she’s never lived. Everyone carries their separate version of the
truth. Everyone hides their single version with both hands. The way the sculptor chisels around
it. Even the stone is complicit. The marble. When I think about all I have done with my hands to
mould him. The things I have allowed to be done to me. I want to place a quarter in the jukebox
of my father’s chest. Select his favourite record. Select the song his heart most loves to sing
Beat and break it.
Born during the breaking of my mother‘s heart or born through it, my mother bore
me with her broken music, born to my mother’s broken song, broken in by my mother’s own
breaking, we broke into song together, both of us, screamingly innocent, both of us bearing
down, in the room of my mother’s broken music, I can hear myself thinking, listening for that
old familiar
tune. The one I wasn’t able to place for years. No, decades. The one I searched for in the bottom
of sock drawers, the broken record of promises that skips the way I did as a girl. Unevenly.
There’s never been a year of my life someone hasn’t told me I look, or laugh, or speak just like
him. Just like him. But I was not born to him. I was born to her, born to my mother’s second
tongue, I stay, breaking my way out of this English--
Omotara James is the author of the debut poetry collection, Song of My Softening, (Alice James Books, 2024), featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and The Washington Post Book Club. Her work has received support from the Poetry Foundation, the New York Foundation of the Arts, the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, Cave Canem Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Lambda Literary and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry appears in multiple journals and anthologies, including the Best American Poetry series. She writes, teaches and edits poetry in New York City.