When a bullet leaves the mouth of a shark

into the belly of my mother,

it renders the skin away from fat,

teachers her 

to rent space in my body

for secrets.

“Don’t you know,” it says.

You must

                Hide, hide, hide

God between her gums and

                fold, fold, fold

enough hope. A gallon or two for the march

into the barrel of a foreign land.

The entrance

to fear

from grief

is narrow.

               The barrel,

               is [only] wide

               enough to

               allow loss.

               language

               to name.                          

A bullet is a

wound

watching the future

               alchemize into ash,

forcing death into rooms of tiny bodies.

Denoo Edinam Yawo is a Ghanaian poet/writer whose work delves into themes such as body, the politics of language, spirituality and faith at the intersection of living. She is a 2025 Black Atlantic Residency Fellow, an alumna of the 2025 CAINE Online Editing Program, and the 2025 Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (JIAS) Creative Writing Workshop for Emerging Writers. She is the winner of the New Voices Poetry (2025), the 2024 Second Runner Up and the 2025 First Runner Up of the Adinkra Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Rowayat, Kalahari Review, among others.