Marcela Adeze Okeke
I.
We lie / jagged / on the rock / to see stars / that already sung / our / funeral hymns / seen us coil / a reversed
fern / eaten as we seep / our throats clamped / & scratching from all / the crash / rang from our mouths / past
/ I pray to / be / beaten /
by wave breaking shore / until I understand pain or at least the grit of a sand pressed body / I don’t know why / I still hide / the words I want to say beneath my tongue / too thick to fit / in this narrow jaw.
I don’t know how to survive yet. I crave to be unspun.
II.
scalp me till my flesh carves flakes from your palms
Pierce until my belly beams from the unstrung seam–shell
Till you break the silica, till you see the stone in me
And spread me across this land so thin
I am but a wrinkled trace .
I am but
the cascade of this shore’s tears.
Marcela Adeze Okeke is an artist of many forms. One time she met a flower that told her its loveliness won’t last long, so now she likes to write about the things she loves before they start to wilt.
