After Corfu by Jennie Xie

 

From the east to my underbelly: an abyss of hue.
Of what gain is swallowing a thing that ends up as waste? This is what love is; a recycling process in which heartbeats might become disposables. Every man is an island in a body of water. A sea of drought even. The stars have come up today but the galaxy might envelop them tomorrow, it is what happens with affection, you metamorphose into things that shapeshift in the clouds, from the right a cigar, from the left an uncouth image falling from grace. Something about love is rooted in demise and orgasm too is a little death. I start this poem with a destination, now I navigate it with thoughts of the man who left my thighs with my name in his mouth. Every day I wake up and my country does not happen to me, I plant a new seed. I count my days with my tongue kissing my teeth. Robbed on my first day in search of truth, I only have patience for things that do not eat my joy alive. A whisper today, a shy moan tomorrow. My love affairs are like the anthems in my country, a freedom song for unrequited love. I want a person’s eye to call my body home, but there are many women inside me. In my country, a local is both a starving child and a wailing mother, but a politician is only a hungry man. One day, I will be the white in the middle of my flag and love myself without the consciousness of place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Artur Matosyan on Unsplash