Strangers at a Bar in Chicago
on a dance floor
a man walks up to me
says i remind him
of everything
about his son
he pauses a bit
when i demand
a doorway
to his memory—
he was just like you
he says again
we were so close
yet distant
in the neon colored
light of the club
bodies stack in pairs
keen to know
the rhythm of joy
the man and i
lean on each other
i on his shoulders
him on my sweaty head
as i let him know i feel
the same way
about my father
who once gestured to me
some dollars in an envelope
he had changed the previous day
at an exchange bureau store
slipping it into my hand
while he beckons me
to remember home
saying i don’t care
where you marry from
insofar as you know
you have a family back here
as though the question
was about where rather than who
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara is a Nigerian writer and poet. He is the author of the poetry collection, In Gorgeous Display (Fordham University Press, Sept 2023). A 2023 Lambda literary fellow and an alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop, his work appears in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Wales, Lolwe, The Republic, Salamander Magazine, and elsewhere. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook, I Know the Origin of My Tremor (Sundress Publications, 2021).
