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.