Green Linden Press

Sparus —Tolu Oloruntoba

for Anthony Bourdain

This neural mesh, the coral brain of sads, knows
when another of us is sunk. Some speak of Grey Goo,
the mitotic mush that will eat the world. It already
has, and the Sertraline suds of our sewers
have not washed away
the denticulate scum, the flocculant armor, the rafted pleas of the river
for blood.

Sentence the hanging trees, too, to death, then. It is only right,
to pulp their flesh, and char the ink-ed scroll. It is only right
to trace the unravelling of silicon, rappelling up the beach,
wicking an in-finite
apron line.

Settle the shelf, then, let’s.
The reef calls our skeletons as symbiote schools
nibble them clean. Human bones
make for terrific daggers. Castoff the land,
our accreting forest, our limestone spears, our stalagmite lunges,
our congress can pierce           the belly
of a continent.

Note: The line “Human bones make for terrific daggers” is the title of a Newsweek article concerning anthropological studies of New Guinea daggers.

Tolu Oloruntoba, a Nigerian poet and physician, has published or forthcoming work in Pleiades, Obsidian, Columbia Journal Online, Bird’s Thumb, American Journal of Poetry, SAND, and elsewhere. He lives in the Greater Vancouver Area.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2018