Goodnight Gotham.
Picture from the Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash.
By the borough, I nestle my palms
around your neck — not a funeral
yet your eyes glaze from inside
your boxed head / We should
leave / We could leave yet
your shoulders chitter in
disagreement / The rot
the headlines the slug of
the gutters that fettered and
fettered with nameless
names
We live in monochrome so
you never see the color elsewhere
the possibility of rainbow overhead
This is how I need you
This is where I leave you
Photo from the Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash.
The Morning After.
(For Akachi, Dora, & Somto, who learned to fly ahead of time)
— you die, a deer nudges
the little one
away from the
roadkill like a
bad omen,
your dog struts the
lawn in excitement with
your mother yelling
at
your brother not to be late for school.
Elsewhere, your body
learns a new language
only the dead retain
fluency for.
Art by Fons Heijnsbroek on Unsplash.
Fundamentals.
It’s fundamental we think
of water properties,
Fundamentally, every pebble
has a fluid story —
fundamentally, I’m wrong &
every rock can dissolve
if left
submerged,
every water body is a baptismal ritual
expecting a body,
even your thigh,
especially your thigh,
especially your rough waves I
find myself calcifying into
fundamentally, we all drown,
and this poem leaves
no manuals
for drowning
in case of a raging thigh, let a
palm be a surfboard,
and let a second palm be
knowledgeable especially
in flamethrowing.
Sketch from the Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash.
Pantomime of Rapture; Self-Portrait of Myself As An Almost Survivor.
(After Revelation 8:6-12)
All the names we had for God couldn’t
save us when the angels came. You
were out alone in the
fields, I was supposed to come get you. I met
you petrified, your mother’s shawl adorning your neck.
Amongst other things, they
took your gold too. I left a
forsythia in your mouth — a prayer for your
metamorphosis. The storms persisted, ravaging
the entire town.
The storm is the clarity
The televangelists were
having a field day warning us
of the plagues & their unusual
healing properties. The Antichrist, they warned.
Still no man or beast arrived in
fiery fury or orbital resplendence. Your mother
baked more cupcakes awaiting
your arrival; I told her it’s unlikely
we’ll meet ghosts. So we sang hallelujah
& ate sugar & flour & drank enough
coke to stifle down our grief. O Death — I know your hand
& it’s rot. I know the salient relief of a
coffin being earthed. The storms persisted,
making unpleasant memory
of everything in its sight. Your dog, too, ran
in the field to catch mice, its whimper
haunted us for weeks. At night, for entertainment,
we looked up & saw death’s clutches in the dull pang of clouds throbbing in delight
at
our
annihilation. Abba, what is this
calamity you’ve
wrecked on us, your mother cried
one evening. Not long after, an angel smitten
with hate came to kill us all because
we
said
His name.
I lay unspooled, rivulets of blood
dribbling down my face. I imagine
we meet elsewhere where we’re not collateral costs of a celestial war.
A place I yearned for as a boy, where
I murmur amens into your calf. Where
wonder possesses ardor
we never imagined we’d miss.
Art by Óscar De La Lanza on Unsplash.
Love as Annihilation.
After Ethel Cain’s Nettles
For Deborah
Somewhere in this poem, we
learn shapeshifting to hide from
our bodies. I am holding your marigold
skin in the sole of my feet, through
far wrung wrists, our arms link to
keep us together
in spring, you said your hands were made for my
heart
I have held
kinder things
I have held a petal up in the light
& stripped it of all its glory just
to gaze at my reflection
love tangents at our elbows, my head at 45°
dreaming nightmares where clawing at my neck
is nubile
I am a collage of every war my
mind has waged in the name of
myself,
I am waiting for you
who’s spent too long in
the bathroom
I don’t want to wake up
on my own.
Art by Zeyu Jiang on Unsplash.
Ars Poetica (The Game)
For D
The game of truth or dare implies we say what we would do rather than how we feel. Where is my hand if not in
that cornfield, a turtledove plummets to the ground, wings hackneyed by wind & I watch you practice a murder
on it. Your never receding penchant for saving things, myself inclusive. My fingers stiffen in my coat as I watch
you fail at resurrection. This poem is a love poem, but I might have a hard time convincing you. Notice how I
am trying to tell the truth: How every poem about us is a sentient bullet when lodged in a ribcage inspires the
same dance, the same song & subsequently, the same death. How in dreams my feet acquiesce to a backward
pull till I’m outside the door. What’s the longest possible distance of a lover & a nightmare? The most tragic
things are not impossible. All I dream of these days is to lower my back over you, like a pilgrim: head bowed,
back broken, and tongue flaking dust the shape of prayers; like how palm trees revere a hurricane. Like how
everytime you hold out your hand, my hand betrays my body & sinks into yours. Yet, the terrible thing hasn’t
happened, but you know me and my monsters. The truth about this poem, this photograph tucked neatly into a
threadbare pocket, is that it exists & it can be lost. Everytime your face motions around my screen & I conjure
an insufficient adjective, my throat tightens with the weight of my lies. I have often called you beautiful, when
the truth is, I can imagine a life where I do not know you. I do not want that life. I cannot live that life.
(reads better as a picture instead of text)
