a map of the city of tenderness

Don’t colour me red and then colour me blue The multiverse in my eyes can only reflect Your black empire of gargantuan pigs under the bridge. The first time I saw your kingdom I was in a taxi I saw your sternum and then your lips. To me it looked Like coordinates of a map to somewhere else For which I left home and my doomed language.

I cannot read your walls anymore Their light carry different meanings through the glamour of rectification. Leaving behind a language for you Meant leaving A spine and thick incomprehension It meant mistaking the street lights For gold blades crowning those mangled skyscrapers.

What becomes a division of space and time, my memory Connects with motion stretching across the curvature

of your lips.

Now looking together above the fathomless oddments You found me nestled between me and my desire. Now my form, a storyline like the burned background In an old photo studio where they once transformed energy to harmony.

Imagine whose hands on my shoulders darkened by despair Endangered a patchwork of people sleeping in the wild Dogs being bullies and colours uncoupling from past to present Absorbing incubating memories made of grainy meaning

I refuse your present of intelligibility with connection As sentience of objects of permanence my city cannot hold When water floods in, I step outside to see two half-dead crows Fighting love off each other’s mouths.

-

This poem appeared in the magazine Cafe Dissensus based in New York City, USA, as part of their "Poetry and the City" Issue (December 2021). The original title of the poem was "dismantle settlements".

This is the URL for the complete issue: https://cafedissensus.com/2021/12/26/contents-poetry-and-the-city-issue-60/