two poems

by Scherezade Siobhan

Volver (Dame tu mano) “To love is sometimes a rather disgraceful fear” — Attila İlhan, You Are A Must For Me There will be more evenings to fail: unbuttoned copperpods, a few crinkles loosening the rose-ringed beaks of waxwings. Defeather the sky and the carcass of this dusk is a coffin we haven’t nailed shut yet. Every mother wears the agate omen of a daughter she could not bury or flame. Hair lengthened into a worship song – glory to bone. Its godly quicksilver. Its faint saudade hummed to a shivering switchblade. Glory to breath. Ghostless haunting. I tried to scheme myself into a quieter animal – flattened moans, iron-kissed hooves. But the blood plugged in its tightrope & all I could hear was hunger, sainted, stretched between the shrines of my teeth.   fana-baka i am an explicit failure at teaching the aesthetics of any veil. god is most Merciful in how He plows my hunger. my throat is no sirr, His name is not parched in a prayer. it is an echo unlocked in a foreign mouth. it leaves the low bridge of my tongue hyphenated by a language that can not be extracted like a dead wisdom tooth. an app lets me walk 5 miles in the looped darkness of my own room. anti- depressants are an education in the false dichotomy of seeing how far you’ve come without leaving where you were. i watch an elephant give birth—the calf dropping slick from her tired body like pomaded rock. her herd catalyzes to a sincere keeping. they say elephants know how to wreath a birth, keen a death. on the floor, my body tense in its paused time— slowly flourishing into a new tusk. — Artwork by: Charlsey Allison
Charlsey Carina Allison is a short story author, poet, and newbie photographer. She is currently unpublished, but is in the process of procuring an  literary agent and publishing a compilation of short stories. She also adores otters.
Instagram: @nubilouserror