Poetry

There is only you and me and the new carpet and the dusty clock hand, there, slowly bending as the bedroom fills with laughter and late afternoon. There is glee in this time—the hour before departure, the final song that will stick to my skull like honey. The love lyric, the soft clang of bells. […]

The myths are logged in our collarbones, / travel through our mid riffs. Our stomachs / learn to home mythologies as prayer.

before love is cartooned worthy of honour,
before lawyers bind grief into forms
where careful records make up for absence

a man drenched himself in gasoline /
to protest the Biafran war. He’d stood across the road /
from lunatics cheering for him to die.

I crisscross a cardigan over my chest / try to name the sound of a small boy / who can’t yet tie two words together

do not succumb / to the allure / of smooth, sexy / skin that fools / the eye /
Your skeleton / is your framework, / lay in the bones, / the muscles, / the soft tissues

“salvation is an encrypted message in the belly of a shark.
our divine loins surrounding a fallen body like sworn angels.
… our innards spilled out like petroleum jelly:
a matchstick thrown in here is self-arson.”

“the blossom fades / And they are forgotten with the seasons.”