Excerpts
children of omolokun
Lot’s Fall
I’ve kissed a black stone in the snow. Perhaps it was a black eye in the stone’s dream in the snow. Like a spot on the white tablet. I’ve kissed a black eye in the stone’s dream in the snow. Oblivion is yours, yours alone! No I didn’t turn back and there turned all that …
Posing Nude
after Living Room by Deana Lawson If I were to choose a man to pose nudewith, it would be the ex whose handin mine, I couldn’t distinguishfrom my own—just as, studyingthis photograph, it’s hard to tellthe male’s fingers, pressedinto a triangle, from the female’s,decorated by acrylic nails so longthey curve like a penis might. This …
This Is the Dream
In the sun, brown men glowas I hear the clop of their hammers;they nail new siding to a building, stapletar paper to a roof, whack weeds off the edge of a yard. Always these men of soiland gasoline bring me to my father,a different brown but brown. I picturehim standing with his friend like these …
Miniatures
My nightmares about betrayal have all come true, if possible, I would like to understand the nature of your room, I wish to place something inside the wardrobe closet. A small gift, as small as a jam jar of poison, as small as a loaded makeshift pistol that a toddler once used as a toy and resulted in many …
Shunting from Dakar to Casamance
I A father takes it as his job to order:rank the powers in the house so the man o’ yard could slicethe crotons with the cutlass how he gauged it, but couldn’t dark hiskhaki-wearing self onto the porch; there, the woman who did pressingeased a drink to sun from shelter through the grillwork’s diamond gaps,sumptuous …
A World of Tangled Vines, Falling Berries, Bruised Grapes, Rough Rinds, and Ripening Flesh
Mom cracks the packed dirt with a hand hoe and turns it over again and again. She works right through dinnertime and doesn’t come out of the yard when her arms start to ache and her knees stiffen. Above her, the sky closes up. The pace of Eastern Circle slows down. Kids stroll through the projects …
that time u wore enyce kinda changed my life
this may come 2 late 2 b meaningful, but, i used 2 sneak thru ur drawers n read all ur letters. i just wanna confess that 1st. finding those letters 2 ur bffs n hi school boyfriends was 1 of the hi lites of sharing a room with u. ur shorthand was expert level, u made …
The B-Movie Apocalypses All Failed
When the dead awoke in their gravesthey were too weak to dig their way out,and even the ones not yet buriedwere awfully tired. Meanwhilethe giant spiders struggledto contend with gravity, their organstoo heavy now to function, and anywaythey were not well adaptedto drink larger prey. Their starvationleft a lot of cleanup; sanitation workersdemanded better benefits. …