industrial complex
After Danez Smith

we were a piece of the mutiny we wanted to end.
you were the rebel sooner to see how its miracle works.
my faithful hands are still trussed to the ground. 
hallowed eyes propped on the show in silence. 
our mouths were the only betrayers. 
throats chock-full with protest songs.
when the crescendo started to unravel,  
you were the first to see through its pattern.
for every note, there was a gaping cleft
of absence calling you in. it sounded familiar. 
told you to look closely 
and make a pattern of things you had lost.
in june, your mother’s bed frame.
in march, your father’s metal crest.
there you were, feeding a system
that had made an appetite out of you.
how holy is a tabernacle of worship 
made whole by the fractions of your sins?
industrial complex: first note sounded
like the story of your mother’s death.
the nation made a casket of her bedframe. 
second note sounded like a blunder.
the bullet that dissolved your father’s 
sugared body was forged from his metal crest. 
third note sounded like me.
i haven’t realized they’ve made music of us.





Eden Rewritten

The night the town disappeared behind us, 
there were halos piked atop our heads.

Wings behind our backs like cherubs.
Butterflies frolicking their ways out of our guts.

Neither of us believed in miracles. 
But when I licked the history your past lovers

have made of your lips, I lost my tongue 
in the depths of your throat — watched a new one

bulge out of my eyelids that I no longer know
how to make love with my mouth. 

When the wet touch of my stares on your skin
softened you, didn't you see how love

is the purest form of faith? How I poured myself
into you as unanswered pleas and returned,

pure, like pretty miracles. On the eve 
of our first date, we brought Eden back to earth. 

Only this time, you were the fruit I skinned into.
The angels couldn't manage to watch us

crawl into each other like ants. With lingoes
white with holiness, they damned us to hell. 

But the first time we reached for each other, 
didn't we already plant our own paradise within?

About the Author:

Saheed Sunday, NGP V, is a Nigerian poet, a Lagos State Youth Ambassador, a Star Prize awardee, a Pushcart nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, Best Small Fictions nominee, an HCAF member, and a poetry reader at Chestnut Review. He has been published in Palette Poetry, Strange Horizons, Lucent Dreaming, North Dakota Quarterly, etc.

*Feature image by Martin Martz on Unsplash