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Who doesn’t crave exquisite disasters? Vomit of roses, throat scored by thorns, blood- red petals fountaining from unkissed mouths. A heart can only hold so much despair before its roots thread needles through flushed flesh, fill lungs with flowers, choke with perfumed breath. And should a surgeon set scalpel to skin, remove the seed-hard organ, […]
in the milky light of a foggy morning i stand naked at your threshold/ a miniature boat clutched to my chest yèyé/ there are white pigeons in our backyard again this time they arrive in floating calabashes clad in indigo/ white corns & kola nuts hanging on their beaks behind […]
people say ‘as the crow flies’ to mean the direct route between two locations, but crows zig and zag dip and soar they pause to be curious they slip between the realms of the living and the dead they fly high enough to share dried bread crusts with the very stars and low enough to […]
Karthikei (1) A month of the Tamil calendar. This month, in fact, but what is a month without a moon? (2) Karthikei Theepam, a festival of lights held in the aforementioned month. Although, in low-power mode I cannot light lamps (3) Karthikei pū, the Gloriosa lily. They’ll be in glorious flame-coloured flower marking our annual […]
We ran from the burning puppet theatre as they hunted us. I was their cook and you smashed clocks by the river— You say you don’t remember this. When the stone kingdom fell, I was alone in that brick house by the roadside a line of cobblestone lighthouses on […]
I can’t write poetry about this. I can’t. to open myself to the horror is to let the sea rush in. already, I am a thing of sand foundations, dissoluble & frantic. there is an ocean of terror crammed into a shell hidden deep inside my throat in the place where I should be screaming. […]
(I) In the Wild A passive brightness scores its initials on the thatched ceiling, as the sun plasticize our shadows on a wall frame. the smeared patches of light, whitewashed for our voice to regift colors. & sound is made flesh. & the luster worms into both language & leash, unsettling—as the raw weave of […]
Ghosts say funny things when they are family–Ocean Vuong The ferry to this island, you do not meet the crew. No snacks, no restrooms, just ten minutes of pure terror as your car is lashed to the prow and the spray from Sound plashes your windshield. You have never felt the thin of between so […]
The souls in my garden sing: At noon, when light cracks through Sea-salt to the sandy beds And again, when midnight Spreads the sky with stars in A radiance that we, Deep-water dwellers, Can only feel Under our skin, scales. They sing of what they Once loved: Princes, their […]
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