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TO THE WEIGHT OF SALT: TRANSFIGURATION
The Hyacinth Review
The Hyacinth Review

TO THE WEIGHT OF SALT: TRANSFIGURATION

by
December 6, 2022
Abstract watercolor painting in shades of blue
The Smell Of Salt, Anastasia Sirotkina

Osy Mizpah Unuevho is a Nigerian poet and photographer; an…

My father once wrote under Mark 9:49, a footnote— the meaning of salt, it tears me apart O God. The things he must have heard praying, I saw them soon as the bone broke. The eclipse in his soul, in mine too, rhythmic with the smell of burned skin, rising out of the dewiness of his mouth. I thought of the scuffles with the holy- ghost, the first of covenants made with stars. The country, taken out of the cancer in the bone; the halo left behind to eat up, the black-hole in my body— I thought of how now, our bodies should become vulnerable—godlike— by cleansing because my father said so: to tear down anything, to look divine, is to become vulnerable under the light; anything worshipped in spirit & in truth has to be subject to a wound, something beyond the flesh, something holy— for me, I wanted the magic of a new wineskin, far-away from the cancer, set to the miracle of a burning heart— my father said this was God’s wound, the heart seeking after him, the one running into the cancer again & again, the one whose body is a weight of salt: the end of the transfiguration.
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Osy Mizpah Unuevho is a Nigerian poet and photographer; an editorial assistant at Salamander Ink Magazine and a mentor-member of the Hill Top Creative Arts Foundation, Nigeria. His poems have been featured in places: Last Leaves, Ovi Magazine, AfricanWriter, Roughcut and elsewhere. Twitter: @_omizpah.

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