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You are here: Home / Poetry / when bad nights unfurl to form a crosswalk into a day alive with butterflies
when bad nights unfurl to form a crosswalk into a day alive with butterflies

Poetry

when bad nights unfurl to form a crosswalk into a day alive with butterflies

all this time we were seated for our own 
share of the light           now it doesn’t matter
how much furrows are set in our butts
 
today I unthink suicide        I uncork my body 
into the arms of morning sun 
& fall back into        a garden of lilies
 
I’m the chips      & also the ketchup 
I eat the sweetness out of myself
into myself
 
here it is:               the delicate art of 
unspooling in a birdlike motion
 
I love the way my body loves me
we think we’d walk          into a passage
teeming with ravens   & human skulls
 
but our legs    instead   gatecrash a party
of hummingbirds              today I take
 
the shape of a happy poem
bad nights, here, we say cheers to a remaking 
into a cauldron of daisies         we put behind 
 
all the ghosts      all the moments of withering 
today is when your father dies 
& wakes up in the           body of a star 
 
                             I do not worry about tonight
I can almost feel the moonlight on my skin
all I hear are soothing birdsongs      laughters of 
young girls drawing dandelions around bullet holes

Hassan A. Usman, NGP II, is a black (performance) poet and a lover of cats. He enjoys cooking, listening to Nigerian street music, and also juggles writing with modeling. Hassan is published in Paper Lanterns, Nymph, Poetry Column-NND, Five South, Lunaris, and elsewhere. He can be reached via Twitter @Billio_speaks.

Featured Artwork:

Hope

Deborah Ajilore is a Nigerian writer and photographer. She is a member of the Frontiers Collective. Her works have been published in Hennepin Review, Mud Season Review, Sapphire Hues Press, Stanchion Magazine, Shallow Tales Review, and elsewhere.

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