Lymph
for Betty, Philip, Fade, & Richard
I pledge allegiance to my safety nets, my beloved anchors.
My self-medication & purging spell. I pledge allegiance to
my lifeboat, red with the syrup of life — once I was drowning
with a shipwreck in my quaking hands. My body only works right
when it slams its doors in my faces. These faces that change
color in the formless heat. Watch me tiger. Watch me panther.
Watch me white wolf, panting as my heart beats just a little too fast.
Once at thirteen, all I did was run & my left knee is still broken.
Sometimes I stop breathing in my sleep. Even in rest, I am reduced
& bated, as if waiting for something to happen. Well, tell the sickness
I have more than two hands. If something should happen,
I have my good, shiny friends, who said everything to me when
my voice disappeared for two months. My friends, my perfect friends,
tiny cherries of kindness, who have the doctor’s phone number &
màámi’s phone number & an elegy for each of my missing ribs.
When I am swollen with fever, they bring me ice & a tangerine.
They seal my nostrils so my mouth is new & vacuous. Gently as a shiver,
they send the medicine down my throat. This time, I am opening
my mouth voluntarily, to speak. This time, I do not feel like a burden
for sharing my burden. This time, I say: o beloved, this body has again
held in the toxic, just as it has failed me agelessly. O beloved, I am again in need.
O beloved, place your heart next to mine so close it is the only noise I can hear.
Ars Moriendi
Pallor Mortis
Arrange the dead things in a single line, lightest to a perfected dark. Despite the body’s steady cruelty to itself, it does not come first. A pure white moth, the cat’s dry skull, two love letters, one on brown paper, & then the boy’s corpse, his pink lips no longer pink. The rest of the list is graceless, even more gruesome & bloodied. Thick hair bleached pale as bone. I am going invisible, piece by shining piece.
Livor Mortis
All is coming up from low places, blood draining back into marrow. This truth is reversed — everything sinks. Even blood must succumb to gravity. His halo pools at the back of his head, no gunshot wound to set free its golden red rays. When my father died, the sucrose settled first, slow as a crocus opening. Imagine a mechanical horse being powered down.
Algor Mortis
You, on the fifth floor balcony, with the wicked wind biting. You, leaning into the chilled hands of the night. You, with fuchsia in your dead hands, after the hunter’s dog nudges you with its cold snout, which is not as cold as you. When my grandfather died, màámi left my baby brother in the tub. She went to weep. The cooling bathwater rippled around little Gideon. If it makes us feel alive again, heaven must be the place with heat.
Rigor Mortis
The body, a machine working to keep the mind burning. First, we crack it open, broken in half. Then, peek in to see the viscera, luminous & vivid. Still, a song, rustling through the lungs. Still, the stomach is a little purse, glittering with sapphires & shillings. The useless heart, fat as a whale, yet capable only of shivers. When I died, I stopped trembling. Imagine a mechanical boy being powered down.
Logan February is a happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza and typewriters. He is Co-Editor-In-Chief of The Ellis Review and a book reviewer at Platypus Press’ the wilds. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Raleigh Review, Yemassee, Wildness, Glass, Tinderbox, and more. He is the author of How to Cook a Ghost (Glass Poetry Press, 2017), Painted Blue with Saltwater (Indolent Books, 2018), and Mannequin in the Nude (PANK Books, 2019). Say hello on Instagram & Twitter @loganfebruary.