
ÄTE BY NAILAH MATHEWS
i want a silver ring and the reddest apple in the orchard
i want to scrape my tongue on the wood
i want the oldest tooth in your mouth
i want the sexless eroticism of the sea
i want to be a strange reclusive poet
part time radish farmer who can only
write at desks with vases with four
yellow flowers in them on them
i want dirt in my cup of stars
so casseopeia can see the trees bloom like
comets hurtling down to the netherground
from the earthsky
i want to come trouble your thoughts
i wanna be the little neighbor that lives in your ceramic butter cup
i wanna get all tangled in your shower drain hairs
i want to put your tongue in the pencil sharpener
i want a different kind of tension
i wanna take a bath in your pot of witches brew
i want to mash the hot sweet potatoes in my hands
and pick brown sugar off my scalp like dandruff
i want the angel i have to wrestle for my name
to be an angel with a buzzcut and a dermal scar
i want my kiss from the young miss Karenina
i wanna fall plush into a hail of sweet sweet pollen
i want to be sublunar so i can swallow the moon in one smooth gulp
i wanna rip the canvas out the sky and poke around behind it
i wanna play a kaleidoscope of the night through my mouth and my eyes
i want the last bloomy decay of capitalism
i want to roll my teeth into a mango, roll my head
under water decorated with hibiscus flowers
and silence. whole days and nights of silence.