“Babies on the garden trampoline reach for their future selves between leaps.”

“The woman made of dust

Left fragments of her right hand on your window sill.”

“Fairuza births a small god on the linoleum bathroom floor.

She thinks of placing him in the washing machine’s spin cycle

Or the hole beneath the fence where the dogs sniff.”

“Under the punishing heat,

We gutted small skies from fowls..”

“Heads in the squeaky, blue wheelbarrow

wait for clay limbs,

And taste of men I knew.”

“The secret butterfly smudges

the black and white bomb scene photograph with a powdery wing,

leaving a purple sky for the unborn to take refuge in,

guiding bodies running towards the lens.”

“At dinner,

You tell me you think you know the code for the Hiroshima bomb.

And what this country needs is a random epidemic to create more space.

Somehow, it feels fitting

You are trying to dislodge the menace from the underside of your tongue.

The silences of knives gutting feels weightless.

But then you say have you ever thought of light bending on water?

Of versions of ourselves smiling over clumsy attempts at reinvention.”

“Seven Jesus figures wandering through Machu Picchu

Search for their stained glass son.”

“Making love with the mannequin has advantages.

Like rhthyms of an adopted language

Reverberating on artificial skin.”

“In the slip road,

aluminium, alien fish wrestle Kofi’s face off

while he searches for his asthma pump.”

“I remember walking you to the rocks

Your skull cracking

The sea forgetting

The memory

Of –”

“Ondine circles the dilapitated factory building.

Watching the night angel place dopplegangers

From the conveyor belt

On jagged shards of glass.”

“White road markings on the backs of the women at the British Embassy become arrows indicating left.”

“Ramshackle house uproots to the scowling sea.

One by one,

Drownings move in.”

“A grave in the sky is occupied by the disillusioned mortal,

Drunk on jack daniels and

A thousand hail marys.”

“Tiny doppleganger in the egg compartment of the fridge

trembles from a cold climate.”

“Naked women sitting beside sattelite dishes on the highway flicker from the onset of rain.”

“In the choppy sea,

Glassy eyed babies circle Claudette’s sinking, green veined ankle.”

“Bury him in the blue grave,

Where Gods take turns giving him coroded tongues.”

“Venus goes hunting wearing torn lace panties,

Searchng for oxtail tongue and lingering gazes.”

“After the floods,

Women carry remnants of the battered landscape into spin cycles.”

“Duck from the oil spill stumbles into the highway crash for a rebirth.”

“The Girl levitating beneath a pink umbrella has two bullet holes from a street buddha.”

“Wandering tribesmen recruit the right hands of passengers from car back seats.”

“Snake charmer owes a debt to the fortune teller who lost his heads in different countries.”

“Girl dances in the bamboo frame all over the city,

Resisting the flood at her heels.”

“Merlene’s shadow is a carrier pidgeon,

So she kneels to eat crumbs from the billboard poster opposite the wet bus stop.”

“Stones from ancestors’ steps roll down the throats of displaced kin.”

“Beneath a sly, pink sky,

Ruth adapts to the uturn on her back.”

“Bike tracks from yesterday’s journey decorate our backs,

attempting to infiltrate our speech.”

“Nadine sinks her body into the tub of electric bulbs.”

“When she was made of corners,

She cried in her lover’s arms.

Now the reckoning of straight paths leaves her gutted.”

“The lines of your body in the suitcase reminds me of times we kissed

in dank doorways

on slyly angled bridges

And both felt malleable.”

“The shark’s bite has migrated

To the sullen mouths of animals spilling sand

On tightly wound office corridors.”

“A lung hurtling towards me in the traffic jam has come from some distance.”

“Oh! The sly night gripped by baby teeth waits for you to pass adolescence.”

“Let me fill your lungs with cloud air

Attach a tricycle’s wheel to our journey

Carry old injuries in silver buckets with handles that eventually detach

Feed stories to dopplegangers we meet on water

Let me taste the peppermint sweet I left on your tongue five years ago

Let me gather our fingerprints from the narrative

Unzip in shockingly cold air

Let me love you beneath the honest glare of a dawn”

“Jagged light at the zebra crossing has degrees of white.

And the naked woman tugging my sleeve tells me

The blue siren between her breasts has malfunctioned.”

“A seeping ink sky creates small, blue monsters in stray bottles.”

“You stand beneath the fractured lampost light,

swallowing yellow post it notes written to yourself.”

“Tongues in purple balloons over the meadow talk to a distant sky.”

“Old polaroid pictures of us become an animated ceiling above the suicide on the bridge.”

“Tomorrow,

The ripple from your right foot will line the crack in the pavement where the beggar lost his sight.

You will leave with a battered suitcase in tow,

Claiming we started speaking different languages in winter.

And I’ll toss a coin that only comes down when the silence is unbearable.”

“Piano keys you threw in the river become fingers clutching at tides.”

“Drunk at the lake,

We use fishing rods to catch named half stars.

And watch the edges of night fold to reveal a dawn like tracing paper.”

“Imagine riding a bicycle wearing someone else’s head,

Imagine tasting licorice at the edge of night,

Imagine interrupting street corner conversations with your spare vision,

Imagine telling the shark in your bath water I love you.”

“Car exhaust pipes birth diesel and unleaded oil covered babies,

dropping head first on cold, twisted roads.”

“Rain moulds slick impersonators from bodies trudging the streets, I watch my severed feet trap themselves in the turnings of glimmering alloy wheels.”

“We built a house in the dark, only to discover we used bodies as bricks.”

“Silhouettes made from exhaust pipe smoke

dissipate at the silencing of car engines.”

“Now that our silence becomes crumpled paper,

I straighten it,

To rescue your broken outline from the margins.”

“We make men from the lines of the sea, Let them evaporate in dry, dusty rooms.”

“Beneath my breath, a lighthouse resurrects in the gleam of your eye.”

“I’ve given a scarecrow my hearbeat, he walks into dead conversations as if they’re doors.”

“I sleep within the photo floating in the rough sea. By morning it washes up on the shore and so do I.”

“At H & M, Blank faced mannequins throw their fishing rods into ripples of shoppers, to catch skin.”

“I cry my doppelganger into the chipped, grey coffee mug. She hauls herself above the rim, leaving wet footprints on a thick carpet.”

“On the white line at the traffic lights, the drunken monkey becomes a man.”

“Snow freezes my childhood self in a waning, brown iris.”

“Rainbows in glass cups reach for mouths.”

“Red rivers rush towards me when I’m in the company of cuts.”

“I’ve doused you in egg whites.

But refuse to cook you until broken sunbeams land at our feet.”

“I build a rickety bridge in our silences, yet we still drive through it.”

“Dread headed girl stands on the muddy bank,

dives into the river to save her reflection from drowning.

Only to lose half her limbs in a slippery grip.

Only to watch their reinvention under the marble eyed gazes of fish.”

“Blind dwarves emerge from sunken pillows,

tired from building and demolishing roads treaded in slumber,

guided by cracked light.”

“What about the blue nights?

The ones you cultivate with instruments beneath your skin.”

“I see spider’s legs on the moon’s face.

Between its movements features drop one by one,

Moonshine on our backs.”

“Why do you sit in the long necked metal spoon?

In the scorching heat,

Harnessing a stingray that plants itself on my lens.”

“Green eyed fisherman has caught purple bruises in his net. On land, they swell into limbs.”

“Bramble bush says to one eyed boy,

Your full vision is a rolling egg in the dark.

I can catch it for you,

Make it eclipse the mirrors of a thousand rivers.

If you let me sip from your cuts.”

“Snake unfurls from pit of man to swap tongues. To consume language.”

“The Salesman at the door offers me a price for my scrap metal heart thumping on the driveway.

We watch flies cluster into a black eye above heartbeats.

He shoves crumpled notes inside the hole in my chest as bloody payment.”

“The man inside the revolving door has a broken ceiling within for the man leaping off the bridge.”

“Now your sly eye is in your leg

What shall we do with an empty socket?”

“ I scoop last night from your collar bone,
it is still warm from your skin.
In the morning light it glistens,
reduced to a small, onyx dawn in my hands.”

“The minature flame haired woman trapped in an ice cube presses her face against the cold,
uses her nose to draw a frozen escape route.
When the scream leaves your tongue,
her voice becomes water.”

“I curve my body to compete with the bends in your life.
You ask me to sit on top of the barbed wire fence that surrounds us.
When darkness descends, we’ll use the echoes bulging like toads in our throats to build an orange road.
We’ll walk that road blurry eyed.
At the end, before you leave I’ll warn you,
that my tongue will pierce through the tear in your chest like a cheated, pink flag.”

“My dreams have attached themselves to the thinness of spiders’ legs,
to reach low corners I can’t get to.
And live short, precocious lives.”

“Mobile phone screens have become our night skies.
We dance under the artificial light,
Swallow its glare,
offer our language of consumption as a sacrifice,
while steering wheels abandon cars to steer our lives.”

“Show me the blade on the right side of your tongue,
let me kiss it,
turn it into a shiny, silver lake with my breath.”