poem

gold street

If your version  forgets to mention the girls 
shedding skin 
            beneath duvets, 
a top 
names of  those who’ve come before

this stain willing  more than wanting 
i n v e s t i gate    the weeping boy in your shoulders—frankly

 

you have been wanted      unnaturally 
in showers of apartments by Gare du Nord
bathing your scent onto memory
under shifting skies  
faucets running 
a soundtrack for your  telepathic seduction. 

her chest is a wall of post cards all addressed to you

 

signed xo

this time last year

an ex lover googling a future worth writing about
she wont remember him.  
                   napolean wont let him be forgotten
he texts her random  shards of glass
 shes just trying to day dream about your arms after  the waking.
imagines the sun shy off your cheek 

scattered with  hair.

shared her luggage
with you, eyes gazing under the same hitchhiking moon

her mother drips regrets all along New York City pavement

calling her back, crying her back
into a wound of womb
don’t grow too
don’t grow too worldly or else
a bedroom of ocean, a back yard of rituals
no closets when  wanderlust longs

keeps you longing  
you hear 
         where
she feels

no closets
clothes dragging behind her heels.

 

little did you know 
when you kissed  
            you were kissing 
kissed and kissing
                     a mouth full of griots
all those daughters
dancing there.

 

many a women 
buy pretty lipstick  
sway their hips, giggle  you into a spell

what of a woman

with soul in the grooves of 
          footprints 

decorating earth
each         step 

a dimple born

what of washing 
a scarred lowerback
stretch marks, 
the g r a f f i t i thighs of a goddess.

aja monet
c.2011

this poem was recently published in Super Sunday Times.