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.