Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Lannii Layke : Six poems from Os

 

 

 

SISTER

every nail you clipped rushed back to be held
                 
I  told her    I’d burst into a million flies
in 7  directions

          
like a Mother    I can't count the times
I kept my sister alive
 

  we have those secrets that stick us   like our
         
talk  and   hate   and
waxing piss onto our man
 

   because I once was their child  she knows I am
not ready

You believe things are alive
I’d rather give out to you than the water

  

 

OS

I dreamt so hard of oil I saw it relieve oceans  

I dreamt so hard of  slick                  I saw myself the Boat

Os to shell
Anointment Requisite  of bending

the leather of a hand back on    a known change  a
     
shouldering  of grease

     patterns  the stone spoon
My spilling    
      
looks toward
 

            I can deny I was there it's called covering my stir
Collapse it into the glass jar  I can say

I have never seen this happen in real life     I haven’t  opened into a bottle
                                      
I called it covering my swell      I have never seen this happen in real life

 

 

FATHER

  who broke off into his mouth

  

And my father who sent his children to retrieve me
                                          father the baby

 

Something like nine years
            him             the product of children

   us to cottage conjugal visits   

 

 

PLUM

                      My frequency
 
factors  in the cloning of plums
The rib of plum

in the posture of plum line     a smaller Sweat
       
is that same salt    collecting so
 

 

 

SONNET CALLED COVERING MY SWELL

Under this thinking of water hands
The days I was kept for my parents’ child.
Voicing my sister alive. We broke out

On each other unlike mollusc. All us four
Beautiful young women and men. I love

Saying it that way because no one knew

 

My mother was a shell kept under
The thinking of mentioned men unlike us
Three young waters. Relying on me

For my beautiful sister, my frisk parents could
Break out of silt. No one knew the way I loved.

With my ear to the ground. When the voice pleated
Open an auctioned sea sucked me half alive.

My face begins as the oyster’s bowled

 

 

OS BREAKDOWN

I can shoulder
 
    bending of known
     
change   the  os

spills  leather to    
               relief

the anointment 

the spoon
bottle then  that pattern

I have never seen this
oil before
              
the swell covers  the

              
requisite of            

seeing myself  the  
Boat       

        I can deny
the collapse into the bending
                   
stir of

stone   of slicked of   Boat

 

 

 

Lannii Layke is a young, Black writer, editor, and interdisciplinary designer from Tkarón:to (Toronto). They are the author of the upcoming chapbook, Os (knife | fork | book, 2022), their first physical collection of poems. They attend to crafting memory and fine jewellery.