the rest of our lives

Mentioned yesterday that I'd very recently purchased a few poetry volumes at the Portobello Bookshop ...

... well; here's another verse from Kayo Chingonyi (I really do like his work!), as taken from his pictured 2021, second collection:


Epithalamium

there should be a poem
to bless the hands
that cut and salted
a bag of limes
the hands that brought
that bag aboard this boat
across a body of water
we can touch but cannot see

a poem of praise should
issue forth from the ether
in celebration of an island’s
night-time fevers secular benedictions
shot after shot
we drink to the universal language
of wavy turned up smashed
passing Cuervo between us

and tentative questions
in all we have of each other’s
words me with a mouthful
of stock phrases you fluent
almost in this dancing tongue
our fellow passengers know
like they know the proper
way to nice up a journey home

after the dance
when the light has faded
and the music resounds
from a pointbeyond
the horizon and this boat
we boarded guides us
gentle as a hand on a back
to the rest of our lives

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Kayo Chingonyi (1987 - )

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