gmw motorway
Learning to Drive Through My Mind’s Eye
by Geosi Gyasi

my pregnant mother annoyed me that day
when her words were made of storms:
you can’t drive until you’re old, she roared.

again & again, mother pounded
my belief in a mortar with a thunderous
pestle; i almost gave up.

each new year, i matured in mind.
each new year, mother was not convinced i could drive.
as a child, she drove me to school very often.

i learned to drive with a steer in my mind.
i changed the gears when my heart
beats abnormally.

in my sleep, when i’m still like in traffic,
i hold the car to a half clutch
waiting for the green light

to wake me up. at the gate
to our house, i reverse in order
to fit into the garage.

by the age of twenty,
i could drive to anywhere
in the country through

my mind’s eye. then one day,
in the room with mother,
she shouted, awoɔ aka me.*

beside her was the car key
that smiled mysteriously to me.
i picked it up & drove her

to the hospital; her pains were made
of shock. by midnight, a call
came through—was father from overseas

asking about mother’s condition.
i beamed with glee when i let out the news:
of the cry of a baby boy.

FOOTNOTE: *i am in labour

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: George Walker Bush Motorway in Accra, Ghana. A road I often travel on to visit my mother. Photo Credit: Jocelyn Edwards.

gyasi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Geosi Gyasi is a book blogger, reader, writer, and interviewer. His work has appeared or forthcoming in Visual Verse, Verse-Virtual, Piker Press, Misty Review, Silver Birch Press, Linden Avenue, Expound, Tuck Magazine, Galway Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book Geosi Interviews Fifty Writers Worldwide (2016) from Lamar University Press Books in Texas, U.S. He is the winner of the 2015 Ake/Air France Prize for Prose. He blogs at geosireads.wordpress.com.