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coconut hands

​​​Float away to Zanj, shell opening.
Not treasure. Not to possess.
 
I have had enough of your ducats.
Extractions. My head full of
 
teeth. Jangling pockets plummet sailors
to the deep. Colonized by mollusks,
 
the abyssal trench. To Zanj,
which is temporal, requiring skills.
 
Geomancers. Years carved as ivory
memories. Elephants erect
 
their palaces. Where I’m from
we don’t even elect our kings.
 
Where I’m from I don’t know anymore
which god is possessing me.
 
My spotty history,
bent antenna. Suffering from enthusiasm,
 
my eyes — ports — take in
rolling blue dunes, and hidden
 
among them gold humps
where exists water, exists flesh.
Picture
Charles Moussette. Spiral of Lightning in a Thunderstorm, 1886. Albumen silver print from glass negative. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

pamphlet of lightning

Submerged wreck. Coral suited.
Polyps plop plop for a hand
 
to touch, to cut,
and liquefy. Coworkers
 
offer mysterious hugs
when I say I’m leaving. I’m leaving
 
the surface, scooped into sky.
Amalgamated. Shell shed, shell
 
scooped rough from sand. Unseen
adornment for sky. Skull shed
 
left wide open. Boogieing on
wind, brain circulates. Spirals.
 
Demanding a body. To be iridescent.
A shell. Arcing.

Matt Broaddus is a Cave Canem fellow and author of a chapbook, Space Station (Letter [r] Press, 2018). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, NightBlock, The Offing, and Heavy Feather Review. He is the recipient of a 2018 Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship and a 2018 Artist Residency from the Millay Colony for the Arts. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.
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  • Home
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    • Masthead
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    • Issue One
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    • Issue Five
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    • Issue Twelve
    • Issue Thirteen
    • Issue Fourteen
    • Issue Fifteen
  • Guidelines