Dance With My Father
after Luther

I never danced with my father
more so beside him, sometimes
across in the clock face
of summer dance circles.

My father walks backwards
better than most walk forward—
so whenever he sewed his steps into the living
room carpet, I rushed to mirror my moon-
walking, until he froze,
froze like he’d been caught
by the beat.

But eventually, every good beat
releases, thawing him
allowing a new current to jolt his right heel
lick his leg, startle
his hips
jimmie his torso, electrocute
his shoulders before
departing through his fingertips.

Then he’d leave his hand dangling, dangling
close enough for me to touch
but we never touched— only the illusion of—
and that’s the trick,

and the trick continues through my body:
elbows, navel,
neck, and fingertips
till it’s my turn to pass the zap to you:

You see my hand, are you ready? Ready
to mimic what it’s like
to be held
and to make it look so good
make it look so clean
your audience will beg you
to do it
again!

Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Sierra Leonean descent.

Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in 2023. The début collection was selected by Tyehimba Jess to receive the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award. In 2024, Saltwater also received a gold medal Florida Book Award and the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize. His work interrogates the intersections of West African spirituality, ethnomusicology, cultural expression, and poetics to appreciate the legacies of Black literature on a global scale.

He has worked as a teaching artist for the Detroit-based literary nonprofit Inside Out Literary Arts and lectured in English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. Abimbola is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University. He is also the Poet Laureate of El Segundo, California.
www.kwekuabimbola.com