selections from Isis and Eve
Samson Allal
7
Native hills, Night strikes its napalm match,
asbestos dust is the speech of the palm scrub,
this is an afterthought, a breach of air,
and how come it comes up, moss-caked cubicles,
brass trumpets of bindweed flowers, the time,
and where it wants to be, fried chicken bones,
Freedom chatters for a fix,
the gables are gold, and the river’s womb,
after miscarrying Dawn, answers
the migrant day, who questions the date,
flipping a rolodex with no numbers or names.
8
Vinyl-blind-framed sun-lines on the wall, a voice,
coming in and out, the captive and captor,
one bond, one blood, now let it out,
sand flea prophets at the pulpits of clay,
red streams of headlights on the city grid,
the stove pot’s proselytized scripture of steam,
that’s no tribe for the dead, no tamborine,
but how’s it tilt, not heaven, but its name,
water answering water, wave on wave,
horn-sawed, upright, striding goats
pouring consonants from cisterns in the gorge,
naked moss nymphs splayed on the smooth stone,
the green going on,
hovering eagle holograms, they help,
help to enter the fluorescent flood, now and then,
the stuffed panda cooked on electric coals,
a nest of polyester socks,
owls at the orange hour,
90s Nikes hanging on the phone line.
The century’s still waiting outside the club.
Names and their nations of names are the same
within the source of the withered street vine,
the rubber sound of the sentence wet tires print,
forget all this; come in the hall,
bloodhounds paw frozen forsythia buds,
windows whiten, and the gods of black gold
deliver patterns to the damned,
pyramids tagged on toilet porcelain,
exodus tablets,
silver screens shelving off Sahara sand,
stop, frisk, shout,
empty milk gallons grow off the Yew bush,
emptiness of rails and rooves,
pines brushing up on the project’s bright brick,
monarch of porch magnolias,
but this isn’t really saying it,
though suburban reeds translate the wind’s testimony,
styrofoam willows wilt,
light penetrates the linden’s hollowed trunk,
what’s left is the word, what’s in the word,
the fox’s dusk shadow fleeing the fox,
the fate of ferns in formation,
concrete sceptres carried by the strip-searched clown.
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Samson Allal was born in Boston in 1990. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Black Renaissance Noir, and RipRap Journal. He is the recipient of a Rhode Island Fellowship of the Arts Award. He is currently a Lecturer at Cornell University.
