Category: poetry & prose

working with nothing is what i do best:
it is lapping up the gold coins
of wishes unheard spraying in
all directions from a bird fountain—
there’s something beautiful about
trying to separate gold from bronze
in the darkness that prods at what is
amiss.

working with nothing is what i do best:
it is getting down on all fours to prey
on something unrecognisable and strange.
through the glass of the urn these ashes
are tamed and unmoving, deprived of the
winds that give them song and dance,
yet i’ve held nothing more alive in my eyes.

working with nothing is what i do best:
it is holding on to a drink for longer than you know you should,
being convinced that melted ice
shouldn’t be discounted as a beverage.
the bank notes exchanged for this thinly
stretched delight were grown from the soil,
just like coffee beans, you forget.

working with nothing is what i do best:
it is unveiling the lace that shields your face
and finding nothing but stolen glimpses of
the back of your neck,
or the introspection you press between your lips—
but still loving you the same,
undocumented and subdued, anyway,

always.

in seconds we mutter a thousand verses

and jog our fingers down plastic beads,

though we know that none of the psalms or hymns

can save us from the way we claw onto each other so

we don’t feel the winds of the fall.

like crescendos, i grow, only to scrape my knees

on the harrowing accents you release from the bow of a

…pause

—

because when all the world’s a bathtub

and my ears are steeped in foam,

all i can hear is the lingering doom that screeches

before the plug escapes the geyser

wrote this with natasha during geography class. we had a geography teacher who would often speak in funny metaphors, so we decided to write a poem based on anything interesting she would say that day. i remember she tried to illustrate the concept of global atmospheric circulation by calling the world a bathtub, and prevailing surface winds the downward swirl of drained bathwater. it was perfect.

through the hourglass i peer to see this golden dust drizzle inward,

swallowed by a starved vortex

like those halcyon days when

sugar didn’t feel like mites on my tongue.

with weathered fingers i

overturn this simplistic contraption

and like a metafictional novelist

through the hourglass i peer again

—a timeless craving