Zombie Romanza
an affliction is made alive inside these bones, inside
the tumbleweeds of his darkening cranial stretch.
thus, he sings of a floured sleep, i sink the conscience,
like hook, he dreams of fungal sex. but it is only a chasma
beyond the sopor, a night within the dawn because sleep
is the shadow of death & he is my shadow of everything
bright. now the decay of breath fills the rage-ridden body
of passion plucked against its jungle— once full of rainbows
& cheese & leaves but now of the ruins, the mycoid spill,
fatal floral blooms, & the absolute majority of madness.
now recognition is as blind as the shame, a plump hunger
sits at the back of his head like a bouquet, it calls him
a beast, & I, the prey in all schemes of dreams and spaces.
still, I run into his embrace like a fool, a love so damning
it ends only with this outcome— damned to love,
damned to life & the wicked undying; damned with him.
Interspecific Romanza
1.
flowers appear in the rush of the wave on the foreshore
of this love story, we anchored the light into our skins,
then the song began like an oriental rite, an assailment
of light with raw darkness. oh lord, this new passion
must be the most fatal of all original errs, I cannot look
straight into the sun, I chase darkness at the slightest chance.
2.
dear lover, pixelated chaos is the mother of raw beauty,
and now, you are her child. I am your captured beholder,
a prey to wormholes. we debone desire on the waxwing
of differences— in slits, in mouths, in the rubicons
of midevening over skins, over gods, we bend our little
glow towards the union of our scars.
3.
once upon a time, a hunter fell in love with a woman
in the body of antelope. it ends fatally in a splatterpunk
of soft-boiled hopes, and now, in every reincarnation,
every loop of the cursed love, the lovers shapeshift—
King Kong & the blonde, Yemi & his fishwoman, you
& I. It is a punishment; a man shouldn't love what
a man
cannot love. a man shouldn't love what kills him, but I
cannot deny all the leaks of light that trails the love,
I cannot deny the fullness of life I find in this dying.
About the author:
Olumide Manuel, NGP IX, is a writer, a biology teacher, and an environmentalist. His works are forthcoming on Reckoning Press, and Fiyah Magazine.
Isele Magazine 