Poem 3
‘Here Too Spring Comes to Us with Open Arms’ by Caleb Femi
Here Too Spring Comes to Us with Open Arms & it looks like this: a few youngers sprawled like a deck of trick cards on the back stairs talking all that talk about any day now they’ll be taken under the wing of a dragon little cousins unseen in the side pocket of the function plotting a sleepover if you ask my mum and I’ll ask yours they’ll say yes twilight and three unbroken voices at the back of the bus flat earth theories flat asses flat shoes – sweet nonsense chatting wickedest whine from Chantel and the boy would’ve fell on the dance floor if the arms of his bredrin didn’t hold him up (like scaffolding) two men bouncing along the pavement through another eye they look like young dolphins slicing coastal waves two schoolgirls walking down the street laughing nobody knows why a room of unravelling ribbons reaching for the same microphone to spit over an eskimo instrumental a boy smiles at the mirror welcoming a new strip of muscle breaking through the sheen of boyishness a fresh pair of Air Jordans, clean like a smile and everywhere they touch is hallowed ground a boy who takes pain like a stone looks up and imagines stars hanging in the night sky like meditating monks © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
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Poetry: Extract 3