Tolu Oloruntoba

Africans never presume to count another’s children,

 so we don’t know how many they had, the family

 ours moved in with, each sidestepping the other.

 Mostly. Avoidance was respect: night was their time,

 the musical clan tapdancing ceiling boards to pipes,

 and winching squeaks from plumbing, chorus stars

 above, cosmic dust, pointilist, in sifted asbestos below.

 You would go into their kitchen at night for water

 and see their conspiracy scattering, snooker balls

 struck by light, darting stragglers huffing for the pocket

 hole. Easy, having nibbled their doors under ours,

 thoroughfare through the house and gourmet gougings

 of bread, each mousehole ornate. Losing their shyness,

 we occasionally met at dusk, their whiskers tightrope

 lances measuring the abyss of air on either side,

 sifting our intention, teaching the resonance of mice:

 while the world continues to build ours at the edge,

 to wrench our microcosm from potential space.

Your

one wing

-ed scapula: what does it mean?

Look out, child, clamber above

the fill line of the world:

if we are indeed part

of a continent and not alone, 

where is everyone?

Our vise of hands

cannot hold counter-

clockwise flight, 

is too confusing for radar:

this carceral island 

will never keep us. 

On an armspan

altar below

I imbue

the homespun

stone with a blue 

animus, 

a fletched offering

wind-ing you up.