Other Halves, and: Untitled (Man Smoking), and: Untitled (Man Reading Newspaper), and: Untitled (Nude) Ama Codjoe (bio) Other Halves Accra, Ghana i My father has many names, many faces. I have walked red earth in the city that raised him, sought him in the complexion of the sky when the moon was a canoe. ii The seamstress takes measurements of my bust, waist, arms, and shoulders. She cuts the fabric, then sews it back together. The sewing machine hums a percussion. The door stays wide to customers and weather, a small shop with yards of batiks and geometric, Dutch cloth, straight pins, silhouettes, and scissors. She fashions a purple dress with a scoop back [End Page 118] and jacket to match. I’ll wear the outfit months later on a date in Brooklyn with a man who says the sleeves look like gills. He will tear my cheek before throwing me back: the blood sticking to my scales. iii My cousin Carol lifted the fabric to my skin, the purples and blues looked cool against my arm, tanned from near-equator sun. Carol argued for a lower price, then turned her shoulder as if to go. Come back, the woman called. I carried away what was still just cloth in the same black plastic bags that littered Labadi Beach. In the back seat of the cab Carol spoke her English and I spoke mine. A boy selling water tapped our window. His t-shirt exclaimed, “Go Huskies!” I stared at the rip in his thin shirt, open like a mouth. iv My father did not hold my hand. I don’t imagine he practiced saying the words: they sounded scratchy across the telephone line, the minutes [End Page 119] costly and accounted for. Perhaps he put it this way: You have a half- sister I never told you about. He didn’t confess her age or speak of her mother. He didn’t say, Her name is a versionof mine. He didn’t say, There are others. v My body becomes a twist on the myth of those four-armed, four-legged, two-faced beings who terrified the earth. My father at once the god who tore them apart, set them to wander, and the man who created them. Untitled (Man Smoking) I know about addiction. There are reasons I’ve never smoked a single cigarette. For years it was a deal breaker. The summer we met, you carried a pack of Marlboro Lights in the shirt pocket over your heart. By fall you quit. The truth is I would have taken you anyway. The first time we said goodbye I thought: I don’t want a day to pass [End Page 120] without seeing your face. I know about addiction: the fall without recovery, the way I reach out of habit. My fingers grip the back of your neck. I bring you to my mouth. The smoke stings my eyes. Untitled (Man Reading Newspaper) We used to take care of each other. Like the time you hung the hammock in the backyard and sat at my feet like a sentry. Now and then I’d feel the net sway from the push of your hands. On Saturdays, you’d sleep in and I’d walk the five blocks to your favorite café to cop a copy of the Times. Give you first dibs. You’d spread out the Travel section like a road map and I’d break two eggs on the side of a glass bowl, careful to pick out any shells. I never liked the look of eggs, but on Saturdays I’d serve them with toast and the strawberry preserves I canned in a sweaty July kitchen. Then, having read half the paper between us, we’d draw the curtains and go back to bed, our fingers dirtied by ink and jam. [End Page 121] Untitled (Nude) I was shy to use the word naked in front of you— instead I said unclothed. On a June walk we paused to search for couples making love in the yellow-lit squares of a high-rise Manhattan hotel. The night was moonless and full of city lights...