2017 / poetry / author
S.A. KHANUM
ROME FALLS
…
The perfect storm looks like this:
A body, warm, his. Back to chest,
pull my heart through the ceiling.
Are you accidental—Temporary?
Does the moon sink in your skin;
are the daffodils talking again?
Somewhere, I put on the face,
you put on the laughter, pretend
we’re more put together, less
jigsaw pieces—jammed together
more, gutting up the floorboards
and hiding from each other.
I touch you, a violence, an undoing.
Center of you: a molten mess, we are lava cooling, white ash, snow.
In a thousand years, they’ll dig us up,
a preservation not unlike Pompeii.
Here is the girl, the bed unmade,
a river of hair,
the fire in the living room
still burning.
It is quieter up here in my head.
[This silence]
As if, something were about to happen,
Is happening, happened.
PRELUDE TO WAR
…
Picking flowers, plucking petals,
love—
another lifetime, another century.
Give me green fingers,
everything I touch,
browns, falls—
(anyway)
This is all drone sky—
Marsh of my heart, humid.
What path have you taken,
you lost
lost creature you,
what day are we on now?
& we’re planting limbs
in the garden,
an arm shooting up, here—
Look at all this gangrene,
so sick of all this
new millennia green.
& always the crow-eye
watching me
from the willow tree;
(weeping)—
How you are pulling milk
teeth, spilling blood
into rivers
& playing
with your fingers. No.
No magic.
No pull.
The dead do not rise
because you will it to.
I lay the dreamer down—
This is no time to be soft.
This is no time to be soft.
THE DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
…
i say tar. the words do not come easy tonight.
i say sea. & i find myself overflowing.
you, the raft. the salt. the sun. the land i ache to spill upon.
i say curve all light until it reaches you. fill you full.
i say shadow is another form of movement.
i want to shadow move with you. i see wholeness.
& i say gold. i see richness. & i say moon.
& i say. all of you. with all of me. & i am so full.
& i see. all of you. with all of me. & i am so full.
i say tar. the words do not come easy this morning.
you say sea. & i am overflowing.
NESTING
…
i eat three mouths & then some
& still i can’t bring myself to speak.
go hunting
just me & my primitive mouth,
i come back teething the sun,
midas don’t touch me, i am some type of bird ill.
say old, say mother
of my mother—salt, rub, wound,
bury; Antarctica
i am a second home-coming.
& i am woman tired, all creeks & joints,
door me to sea.
sometimes midway
i flair summer rains; fresh mint, dirt,
garden in door,
this illusion of peace makes me so sick,
speak to be of rebellion & i’ll give,
forget white,
i am dripping red, rabid animal type yes,
i be always half-frothing at the mouth,
no i won’t co-operate,
no i won’t stay quite, stamp my hooves,
call me savage, savage i am.
wear you a crown & call spring forth
& oh where’d all the birds go?
exile: i am desert, in me
an endless river
& what type of deal is this anyway?
am i meant to drown or well myself,
water aerobics is it:
touch, go all knees, bend,
know the call for rain but never deliver—
it’s better this way?—yes?
i go to bed & pull the roots of a tree,
wake up & spit out
the tip of my tongue—yes i am blunt.
& what would your prescribe for bitterness?
hack off half my hair, fast?
lay daffodils at your feet, beg?
hibernate perhaps—
—perhaps i should go round selling honey too?
smile, nod—mother because i am woman?
curl every word
you said
like a strand of hair
wound tight
around my finger & pull
& pull
& oh what a small self-infliction.
TAXI
…
i’m talking stage four, spreading to other organs. bone marrow, blood clots, in the sink, all over my floor. i'm talking bottling days up in liquid form, saving them up for later and then chugging them down well past their expiry date. too late. too late. i’m talking bluer than blue, but still not blue enough. the smell of bleach, how i am always scrubbing something or the other. i watch you in sunlight, not moving, not saying anything. what is a lighthouse without the light—a form breeding darkness. crash onto my shores, hello: broken rest, flittered sleep, sunflower stalk heavy, word association: van gogh—yellow, but the type of sadness that is spilled over, rubbed into. walk all over me, faded carpet, i am all knees. not quite the storm yet, but we’re in it though. i feel the stench of another lifetime—drilling a hole into me, nailing a finger, posting a letter; dog-eared—i am bitten, the moon she is for me, i understand now what it means.
ORPHEUS SINGS
…
& the cage
never did fit easy
rubbed me
the wrong way
chaffed the birds
to claw
i became
a featherless thing.
but
there
your fingers
went,
pushed my ribs
for the key
jokes on you
heart says
locked
in/ is locked out.
but
down i went.
& string-ray stung,
siren set,
mermaid tail,
squid ink;
human heart,
free will,
enough for a potion you think?
& so i tried,
carved that night out
again,
called the stars
for their stars,
shook every blessing,
earthed my knees,
gave away
every piece of gold,
hacked my hair,
took a tooth,
pulled my roots,
turned an eye,
over & over,
bottled air
& prayer billowing
outward i went.
snapped, set,
re-set.
hands you know
they see things.
crying, i docked,
styx i stole a boat.
a curse:
i set fire to the dead,
velvet this heavy:
i am alive.
underneath my skin
another.
& dressed in
marigold laughter
i carried you
where
flowers
the colour
of
jaundiced light
fight spring for your spine.
persephone,
i fold
like a tulip
wanting to be held.
persephone,
she is a forever
i will water
til spring will have me,
til sea seeps to hell.
