- 7 days ago
- 1 min read
love poem with dead bird on shopping mall roof
to become fluorescent, in the absence of heat, to turn water concentric, to not be able to lift one’s feathers, wet and heavy, to surrender to the glass ceiling, its clear demarcation, to be artificial, to be crucified by gravity, to be poured out, to be inundated with rain and scaffolding above air-conditioned shops with rows of counterfeit bags and overrun clothes on headless mannequins, to be the shadow of death, to have the skeleton intact, to have the beak lifted, to know that storms can lead to bird death, to brace for another low-pressure area and another and another, to hear red rain warning, to achieve stasis, to not hear the people below argue in English or know the security guards in crisp white uniforms, to not know anthropocene or language, to not know consumption outside of consumption, to know the loss of mercy, to still be suspended in air, to see heaven so gray behind the skyscrapers, to wait, to wade in the water and mourn the loss of light, to mourn the drowned, to mourn the already sinking archipelago, to be rain, that small flesh in the middle of it all, pinned to blue
HANNAH KEZIAH AGUSTIN is from the urban sprawl of Metro Manila. Her work is found and forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Florida Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.