Spins Are Headlights at Night
nothing is blurred & fast sped – close
your eyes. this is not how you spin
not with outspread arms & after falls –
there’s an art to this: it’s in how well
one’s feet dance; in how much lives
are captured by the blink.
should you take turns into wet fields
with the dead, & spears scattered
all over; should you take other
turns into hills, open your eyes & see
little dots of light so plenty they pass
for small, scattered suns; should you
understand this – spins, like dancing,
can be coined – nights will come done.
Deciduous Petal
for Ernest
I have been told feet do the same
for soles – the way you hold concern
for me, knowing the genderless lines
in which we stitched through each other
isn’t seamless. this is you – pattern &
colour in every tile. of all springs you alone
don’t fall. know this – the way stars do
clouds that let them shine through – sway your hips to every pulse of the heart, tie
scarves & love the world with your every
moving part. I call you the way autumn
call deciduous petals – you define seasons.
& know this – no soul carved out bodies
to be named into, they just loved, like you.
deviance
laid on fabric is a stranded hair
of her boy. she will not cremate this
soul. she will not eject it the way her
womb did her boy – you don’t belong
inside this vagina. he was safe
being her outgrowth, but this earth
of hanging tendrils & branches wrote
his will: don’t remember me old
her eyes is globe & her son doesn’t shine
nights plague him with cold feet & she can’t
tuck it away. he is crescent now. she will be
sand – she will learn that dark smokes
are the dead’s way of soaring & race through
worlds; his light will stroke her again.
Precious Okpechi studies Biochemistry at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. His works have appeared in Brittle Paper, Nthanda Review, Praxis Magazine, Eunoia Review. He is currently the custodian of TWC – a small community of writers in Nsukka.
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