poem for r
By Khairani Barokka
lightning strikes the sky
for women.
it skins clean air
to show earth's mantle:
no place
where purity lies
without danger,
cleaving,
a mouthful
of alarm,
feet gone to
thunderous
precipitate
in one dead blink,
at the drop of a
minor squall.
breasts on a statue
by the herb garden
dampen as its face
grits harder stone
fangs for protection.
horizon is droplets
of water now,
fool statue–
each ounce of
rainfall a woman.
each cloud a woman.
each ant trapped
in dirt's refuge
a woman.
nothing exists
that did not
escape from us,
didn't force us
to choose, quick,
what elements
soaked or dry
in forest and city,
desert and bedroom,
tundra and courthouse,
field and billow that
we as statue, raindrops,
insects, toenails,
vapour and lightning
wished to escape.
Khairani Barokka, "poem for r" from Rope. Copyright © 2017 by Khairani Barokka. Reprinted by permission of Nine Arches Press.
Source: Rope (Nine Arches Press, 2017)