FOUR POEMS by ABIODUN SALAKO
Boy Disembodied In June
It is amazing how full the body isyet it is easily divisible.Basilio DonatiForget your body, boy/ and the way it slides in and out of space / like a sprite and fattens the
corners of itself into thighs and buttocks/ bulky as meat/ and makes things solid
by the sheer force of touch/ torching
the way it slips warping time with clenched muscular sounds/ or how it drenches
itself in salt water/ and gently like a worm/ it dies/ awakes/ then it sleeps
likes a mummy of morphemes guarded by the hounds of silence/
by the faery of cocoons/ by the slur and geometry of heat
how do you recognise yourself without shape/ without some sin/
without something eaten moving inside of you/eroding your plasma?
your body is a high way where accidents/ pause/ then happen/
cuts are potholes, did someone try to kiss you, Elijah/ but stumbled
bleeding from hemorrhaging?/ those slopes where two veins got lost;
did they whisk anyone off with fury?
did the old mountains of your scapula/ shift/ for an earthquake and swallow that person?
did your sternum/shrink/ and hook your neck? What crashed?
what remains were you able to hold?
Is your blood now arithmetic instead of a feeling?
your body is a pregnant thing/we know because we hear things /shatter/ inside of you
we hear you groan and swell/ you birth more spaces that you
forget because you think you are a patch of a broken god,
Dead Fossil
This is what she calls me after witnessing my body laid to rest / in the same white bed / in the attic pretending to be ice / in the heat clogging the walls / boy that is dead asleep in the coffin of his lungs / boy that eats the full length of emptiness / boy that is a mountain of full stops piling at the edge-less-ness of phrases / boy that exorcises himself of God with pills / sharp objects / boy that wants to be real by forgetting himself / I can see all the flashing anger in the face of the second woman that loved me when I peed in the food as a child / in the love that wishes it could roll off the boulder for this modern Lazarus / in the silent mouthing of me choosing this death over her again and again.
A Short Description of Morning Sex as Protein
Your body is
wheat bread,
dawn breaks on you
like omelettes
—
we eat.
Love Me Down To My Blood and Guts
On the outskirts of Lagos / You and I see the moon as bubble / we bring it close to our mouths and stick our tongues in it the same way we stick our tongues in each other / this is the opening scene where we bend like water lilies in freshwater / we burn in each other’s body like incense / we sample what it means to disc jockey on nipple turntables / now, let's say I am a dolphin poking at you / and you are underwater / let's say I am a fruit / and you are a bat / let's say you sink your teeth into my roundness / and I am filling your mouth / filling and filling / love me down to my blood and guts.
Abiodun Salako (he/him) is a Nigerian broadcaster, copywriter and resident-at-sea. In his spare time, he daydreams of Eden. His fractured souls have appeared in AfricanWriter, WriteNowLit, Sledgehammer Lit, Dwartsmag, The Speaking Heart, and Local Train Mag, and are forthcoming in levatio and elsewhere. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria. Say cheerio to him on Twitter @i_amseawater.