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Poems

Memoir Of A Scent

Obsession is the scent of your skin,
in how it captures and ripples my nipples.

It’s the harrowing of your claws
that eventually leaves them scarred.

​It is YOU in the whims of the day that
furrows my insides into butterflies,
set free upon our breath.

OBSESSION anthology, Jul 2022, Bowen Street Press

The Photograph

In the photograph, you’re on the phone with a white woman, who’ll pay you a lot for a Black statement. Like many others, looking to find their dreams in your insinuated singularity, she’ll pay because she hopes to get laid.

She will follow the phone call with suggestive messages that will get her nowhere. She doesn’t know you’re smoke and mirrors, a contrived notion.

My pinks, yellows and greens reflect in your sunglasses. At first glance, you ooze charisma, but a closer look reveals a clenched fist and a creased brow.

The afternoon grows hotter. Much hotter than the season suggests, or my floral dress allows.

Undressed, I feel soft under your fingertips as you blur me out of the photograph. Once stripped of truth, you make it your profile picture, adding threads to the web that is an illusion of you.

OBSESSION anthology, Jul 2022, Bowen Street Press

The Nymph

He reached out to save her from the mist.

Her sobbing body dressed in gold,

glided out of the swamp unimpeded by life.

She flickered her naked skin against him with promises,

right up until the moment his heart felt pierced.

 

The surface broke around them only briefly.

Her hollow eyes promised rebirth,

cold tongue licking meekly.

She settled his last gasp with a kiss,

before closing the green moor's mossy curtains.

 

Crouched in silence,

she watched sad tears mix with blood.

They fluttered the stillness into frothy ripples,

until there was nothing left,

but falling leaves. Such was her nature.

Nevermind

Blood pounds in my veins,

tired, I lie awake for hours.

 

The morning light touches my face,

its cold hands waste my bones.

 

When brooding, darkness kidnaps all,

when happy, he’s a blinding ray of sunshine.

 

And now nothing but an echo reaching me

through the kaleidoscope of time.

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