because it holds the rest of the world like a secret
in the sense that when you pass through one
every eye is looking but untelling we name
it after a lineage―to come from a pedigree of women
who never enjoyed the sex but moaned anyway
i know a girl in the scene of the dream―a collector a nudist
a latebloomer of sorts running a forefinger over the index
of a facade to the outer corners of my eyes as though it is hers to unscuplt
as if to say―i’ll always see you as an answer… barefeet we circumvent
the collarbone of the night like slowdance without holding hands
stopping every now & then to adjust our shadows like loincloths
i―with a bottle of valium she―the corkscrew until we arrive inside
ourselves & trigger the tripwire―a new artform showing how quick
we willingly default to self-destruct how but for one she exhumes all of my birth
marks & mental disorders till her feet begins to hurt the masochism evident
with every footfall every fingering of the stigma where the flower begins its bloom…
could we have known language to be a thing for the lost [insert question
mark] ask the men at babel no one knows how burdening it is waiting on the
universe to take your mother by her maiden name so you could grow
the nerve to complete the taking of your own life because like touching your
self in pagan places suicide is but one void telling another―now i
must leave this body & return from you denying residues of god
family & love full custody hence we are quiet enough to be sudden to be
nothing until we mishappen… but what category of disaster is a body is a
country being what is it they say about dancing into your own story without soles
or nakedness as fireproof lord knows he let us come this far just so we
could feel us come apart steadfast in slow [loco]motion like rollercoaster
passengers on a downward spiral while the country where bullets pass
through every city like ghosts mistaking bodies for air this city in retrospect
of our wildly truant bones chased our gust of ghosts
from prairie to pavement the girl saying― you’re falling again
as the sand beneath my feet starts to quicken
J.K. Anowe, Nigerian-born poet, is the recipient of the inaugural Brittle Paper Award for Poetry in 2017. His chapbook, The Fracturing, is forthcoming from Madhouse Press in 2019. He lives, and writes from somewhere in Nigeria.