Pelumi Sholagbade
magical manic pixie dream girl negro
safety in the inch
towards the color and texture of moss
or jewelry, tarnished, exposure
lending itself to whimsy unforetold
sunspots are nature’s bokeh filter
I am an aberration
on which you get off
a sentiment
or a few:
my back bears the rhythm for you
and like that’s what my parents crossed the sea for
I guess
my sister’s so lovely she might even
forgive me
our landlord’s so cheap he can’t say
the same
every hole dad put in the wall being
intact,
Everest-type indomitable, even, to insert
something about a Tantalusan
appetite, or just a #hustle
mindset: staying
hungry. Pluto doesn’t have
a visa. Everything that would let me
stick
an ocean away. Oh, how many times
can I fit it in,
the Atlantic? Before
answering that,
could we tally (keep the score)
my sorry ass
incorporeal punishment?
That being
how often one can be called ethereal
before one simply vanishes
& when I do
won’t it be in a shimmering cascade
of white flags?
unsubtractable wagging
blanknesses—
for am I not
your favorite canvas?
dogwood flowers make me yawn
their audacious white opening, it reminds me
how all the tears I ever shed
probably wouldn’t reach my ankles
even in a room of relative proportion
and that’s something
I still drink the heights of buttercups
to get to heaven
& I know commitment like how killers
who return to the scene of the crime must
commit
how a seed bur commits to cotton
bedsheets like there
we were there
tangled up, claws out
taking off all five corners
one can only approach precarity, poor thing
this that all the reality that’s fit to TV
phosphorus-rich in pathos, to wet
avail, I still hope,
darkly as a smear
ash to your lips, and no buzz another
sickly cloying featherweight,
begging for love
fever, somewhat pitchy
& I will stunt on you forever
meanwhile
ankle all the way
down roots
love being my second skin
my porch time
my inner shadow
little brow bone
you don’t get it sorry
to rebuke you
to have to
you missing a sweeter fool
like canning rotting fruit in July dew
my screened-in porch of misery is sumptuous
but my real estate portfolio remains diverse,
otherwise, too much
for some lily-white affection
textbook commiseration I would—
you know—
to have just
preferred
blood
Pelumi Sholagbade is a first-gen Yoruba & American writer and artist from Maryland, currently based in Virginia. They take interest in verging on the illegible. They love green spaces, body language, and the color pink. They graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2023. You can find them occasionally on Instagram as @pelum111 or more reliably on Substack publishing under please be normal.
Banner Art:
Deep Pathos, Paul Klee, 1915, The MET
