Poetry
Issue #2
Cinq-Cinquain
Swallow.
Inhale. Exhale
Your unclear silhouette,
As choking as cigarette smoke.
Until
Breath stops.
Your language’s
Structural violence
Pounds the sky; eclipsing the light.
I know
Your thoughts;
Dirty women.
Madonna-whore complex-
Christ, I know how salvation comes
Between
These sheets.
A mendicant;
Because you cannot give.
Like an authority doctrine;
Laid down.
Your words
-ex cathedra-
Script my simple body
Into Mary’s role; just as truth
Expires.
*A cinquain is a short, unrhymed poem, consisting of twenty-two syllables distributed as 2, 4, 6, 8, 2, in five lines.
Dinner nearly gone
A knock at the door.
‘Come back in an hour.’
You did,
But failed to notice
The fields thirst for rain,
The black trees
Reach into a womb
The colour of
Kermes’ cloth,
Or the swelling patch of berries
Waiting to be picked-
The air smelt of
Impetuous summers,
Unaware then of concrete rivers
And streams
Of idealism.
The rizla was twisted
And burnt.
Eyes red as the sky,
Thoughts black
As the silhouetted council houses