Content Warning: Everything
In Content Warning: Everything, Akwaeke Emezi braids Igbo religion with Christian myth, following a species of spirit called ọgbanje who claims their divinity after withstanding trauma. From the opening poem, a familial relationship with Jesus and Mary is established. As the collection explicitly explores violence and self-harm, the aptly-named title poem equates Jesus’ suffering with the speaker’s physical abuse. Given their shared burden of bearing greatness, the speaker’s mother draws comfort from Mary, who tells her, “they never tell you / what it’s like to raise a little god.”
Content Warning: Everything is closely tied to Emezi’s prose work, sharing lines with Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir (“fuck me in a fresh grave”) and characters from their novel Freshwater (“self-portrait as asughara”). While biographical explication can sometimes get in the way, Emezi’s purposeful use of repetition, such as the recurring phrase “i wanted a better world a diving / bell made of tender glass,” in the poem “disclosure,” helps build momentum, allowing the poem to sing with internal rhyme:
no one is cruel if they are fool enough to try then they
die and what a death what a death to not be loved by me anymore the softest
gate-opener i feast on torn herbs and fat gold the wet smear of a perfect yolk
Emezi’s worldbuilding is best expressed when senses collide, as when we observe how “mary / auntie sighs and a flock of sparrows crashes against my ear” or experience the visceral sensation of a voice, as “ox bones thrown against the walls / heavy bamboo whistling on / tender calves.” In an especially exciting contrapuntal poem, “self-portrait as an abuser,” columns and virgules visually manifest multiple readings as a fragmented narrative troubles the line separating victim and aggressor, so that a thrown glass both "explodes" in the present moment and reverberates in aftershocks "years later." I’m excited to read more poems like this—pushing at the boundaries and drawing their content into wilder forms.