Festina Lente; conch of war by Kashiana Singh

Festina Lente
–

The year is ablaze with an urgency of
arousal, god himself rising in orgasm

It has purged itself of its own circus
this has been the year of realization

It is sitting beside its own graveyard
making loud longing sounds, hissing

It is strange when a snake white bud
bursts out of the ripe earth, a caress

It is a bedazzled day today, forehead
falling in slow motion, flapping wings

It mutters a litany of reunion, offering
redemption to galaxies of broken stars

The year is flickering in a desperation
it prowls around every darkened moon

conch of war
–

because water is our past and our present
the future dark as a desert storm, mingled
sounds, muddled, muffled, as shameful as
age and shameless as youth, shrill like the

conch sounding its hungry bellow into a
long silence, cites dehydrated, air sallow
thickness hanging heavy over history, so
perfect in its absence, light a barricaded

border between them and theirs, war that
is at war with itself, imagining heartbeats
new born babies, making love with dead
bodies, bathing cautiously with rust water

restlessness rippling along edges of clouds
absent voices of once alive creatures clear
in their frenzied hymns, barren minefields
blooming into clumps of fins and feathers

an ivy cottage emerging, a man stumbling
towards its door, he is dancing, devrish of
teasing, laughing, his long hair matted and
braided with flowers, I try to reach, touch

Kashiana Singh calls herself a work practitioner and embodies the essence of her TEDx talk – Work as Worship into her everyday. She has served as a Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News. Kashiana’s full-length collection, Woman by the Door, released in 2022 with Apprentice House Press. She lives in North Carolina and carries her various geopolitical homes within her poetry. Find more at kashianasingh.com.