FISAYO ADEYEYE

Ars Poetica

If the skin is just a place to start.
& there is no butcher here       

or we are not its obedient. Might we
then be what pain prescribes

                                                   itself?       
We,  who were not warned  

*

never to linger within silhouettes.
We,  who might look murder

in the mouth. Who might look the mouth
like murder. Who might look

                        like we are not yet elegy.
Only wet battery 

*

bluing into bruise. All peripheral. Like,
as soon as you see us 

                                        you don’t.

“I suppose what a thing wears is its to destroy—
feathers, fur, or skin—all gift-wrapping.”
       -       Kaveh Akbar

Inside I saw him preening feathers,                     gingerly pulling at red barbs.
As in parenthesis, his body within                        this molasses cradle, is plushing
black smoke, is a temperature lifting                   into emergency, even before 

it hovers over his torso                                            one body above another.
like an enigma. How you are                                  what translates: shucked, half-
tongue, half-teeth, a duplicate                               of that darkness, cloaked? Admit

How you want to see                                                him bleeding through the cavern,
this animal banished from                                      his own body, a boy might hear
your worn-out beg, and forgive,                            but blade open, pursue

blckfsh / bird enthusiast / benign boy / fisayo adeyeye has works published in boston accent / souvenir lit journal / the birds we piled loosely / and he is the author of cradles (nomadic press 2017)