​The Small Shopkeeper (Le petit propriétaire), by Josh Nkhata

The Small Shopkeeper (Le petit propriétaire), by Honoré-Victorin Daumier (France) 1860

​The Small Shopkeeper (Le petit propriétaire)

Le petit propriétaire is tiny enough to hang his hammock in the folds of your brain.
The radical youth flock to his shop of lumber, leather, and limbs.
In a cavalcade, they muddle, bushy-eyed, outside the tinted windows.
Shaking now, they chomp at the hem of his wrangler jeans.
“Will you let us in?” they ask, “We are thin and vivid.”
“Everything is! Everything is! Yet, strangely, I am compact.”

Le petit propriétaire fastens his monocle and prepares for our arrival.
He embroiders kaftans by the light of a twenty-watt lightbulb.
He stuffs shotgun shells with Mesoamerican chia seeds. 
He writes a treatise on papyrus with a Pilot G-2 Premium gel roller pen.
It reads, “Let us see ourselves as polymers colour-printed in amber.
The neolithic monster who bought me my crib
Has updated their LinkedIn Profile.
In the ‘skills’ section, it is decreed:
Reliable, Congruent, Good at Burrowing and Time management.”

Le petit propriétaire lets us in one at a time.
Handing us a stenographer’s keyboard he asks that we caption our question.
“Will it slow down? I cannot breathe under such duress.
Is there something you have that packs a real punch?
That could send me ripping through the muslin of space-time
Into a quiet place with no mechanical hum. 
Into a place where I can feel the sun pool up in my pores
Where the wind will lift my back hair to waggle
And where there are no precipices or revolving things?”

“If I could sell what you describe I would be a very rich man
But, perhaps, one poor of character.
Honey does not spoil but you should not liquify your assets and dye them gold.
Like the others, you may come clamoring again tomorrow if you wish.
But know, tomorrow must come, clamoring.”

Josh Nkhata

Josh is a student at the University of Chicago studying Creative Writing and Media Arts and Design. At the university, he is the Co-Editor-In-Chief of Blacklight Magazine the university’s only Queer/BIPOC literary magazine. Currently, supported by a grant from the Stamps Scholars foundation, he is working to design a series of musical synthesizers that "play" and present soundscapes of black communities