Missionary

A revelation hits home & we're poured out of blessed leaflets,

tossed onto the medicated morning.

here, I am grape wizard, perched above baobab 

to confess high school males into scampering.

the skirt pulled halfway is unfinished business.

blooded lavatory cupping hormones in wasteful spillage.

the punchlines of teenagers laced with antiseptic vowels, whitewashing brick walls.

castrated metaphors, broken over virgin slate—

the kind to kill you on the spot.

darkness is a manner of language.

Christ: a solemn voice note in the lexicon of grief.

my wrist, twisted into a yarn unbraids the fertile lessons from a root word.

I bed the miracle with bare hands stitching meaning into uniforms.

in the caged light, I praise the wind for this naked privilege,

& air short-circuits round my lung.

the missionaries hoard bookworms & make monks out of philosophers.

they debunk Christ, registering their displeasure in raised armpits & archaic slangs.

rummaging a thesaurus for synonyms—in the hungry custom of a poet:

I need my palms splay-footed, bending the

same way into every alive sheet.

knuckles: half-rounded as broken walnut.

I ghost into whitening to achieve surveillance:

the neat burden of teenagers making toy guns off their fist,

as they empty themselves into sound—echo by re-echo.

forehead, graced with the rifle stink of moral decadence.

femme lips, locked in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,

while I bullet past the divide of leaves

till nature yields an olive branch.