After Lindsey Stirling The shrouded lake cries out again with a mouthful of peaches and crows, this time, from a chasm of dearth. Where is the innocence in the emptiness desired into wounds –the rose-pink tongue caroled with bells uncoiled inside the walls of the mouth? Away from the sorrow that bends the river and its water, let this newness become a siren. Let it ripe and flesh like a lightning in the cloud. Let it harbor its grace and do whatever it wants with its bloom. The heart opens and life is beckoned out. In the blue, a mouth is decorated with a blend of verd antique, the monstrosity of silence. Cobwebs around the bones, the teeth misted by soulless music. Words take off from the planes of the lips and linger in the air, in the manner of a caged moon –its light trapped in a transparent cloak. Reflections everywhere, but its house is haunted by memories. So the mind sings itself into a bird. Though its wings lie broken beside it, still it throws itself against the borders of sound, whittled to the marrow.
Wale Ayinla is a Nigerian poet, essayist, and editor. He is the author of To Cast a Dream (Jai-Alai Books, 2021), selected by Mahogany Browne for the 2020 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. His works recently appeared on Guernica, South Dakota Review, TriQuarterly, Rhino Poetry, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He is a staff reader for Adroit Journal. He has a Pushcart Prize nomination and several Best of the Net and Best New Poets Award nominations, & in 2020, he was a finalist for numerous prizes which include the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize. His manuscript, Sea Blues on Water Meridian was a finalist for the inaugural CAAPP Book Prize.