Faith Arkorful, The Seventh Town of Ghosts

 

Auntie has three children and all are born before breath.
She takes the third child home. She lays him to rest in a crib
he’ll never grow out of. 

____

 

Miracle baby. Gabriel opts out of making an appearance,
but men of the earth are always willing.
The rudest carries a machete. He chops at the ground
looking for weeds and finds cousin’s hand.

One palm carries a long scar through it, an oblique,
undiscovered constellation. (“MIRACLE BABY”)

As part of this year’s spring quartet of poetry titles from McClelland and Stewart is Toronto poet Faith Arkorful’s eagerly-awaited full-length debut, The Seventh Town of Ghosts (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 2024), a book that begins with her mother, and of origins. “i am going to tell you about yourself, she says,” the poem “ORIGIN STORY,” which opens the collection, begins, “which means she is going to tell me what she knows of / a beginning for herself.” The poems in The Seventh Town of Ghosts are thick, tangible and evocative, populated with family and familial connections; of familial spaces and cultural apparatus. “I can only guarantee my breathing in the present.” she writes, as part of the poem “WHAT ERA WOULD YOU TRAVEL TO IF YOU HAD A TIME / MACHINE?,” “This life is my only / chance. What comes before glows in the dark.” These are poems that seek, seek out and call out, responding and reacting in ways thoughtful, and with considerable weight. “I have no answers,” she writes, as part of the poem “LONG ISLAND MEDIUM,” “only small honesties. / The moon moves around us and us around / the sun. Every breath a plant makes is an / act of forgiveness. Winter is a chore and a / punishment. I know these truths.”

A clear and confident debut, The Seventh Town of Ghosts is a book of truth and connection; a book of witness moving across the culture, amid the long shadow of ongoing and perpetual police violence. “I tried to explain the story and you said that if / the police don’t provide a reason for the stop then they / have done something illegal.” the poem “NO DIFFERENT” begins, “You are telling me this means / I am allowed to walk away. I am trying to explain that / I have never seen a police officer struggle to find a reason. / You and I do not share the same rules.” With a strong and optimistic heart at its core, this is a book that works to speak openly, while attempting to reconcile such differences, disturbances and brutal and blatant truths. Or, as the poem “JUSTIN TRUDEAU DREAMS IN BLACKFACE” ends: “This / country belongs to me. This body, all bodies. I am a kingdom of bodies. / Indeed, many will have to stand throughout my performance.”