Three Poems by David Ishaya Osu

Castles 

Our bodies are castles themselves 
we built our houses with stones 
no one thought outside a tea garden 
we threw sleeping pills, we had milk all day 
it sounded like glass breaking / I was given yellow tights 
you would stay with a stripe and say, blankets love 
it was difficult not to sleep with the oboe 
he made every birthday delicious, he made lemon curd 
some kisses hurt, he said only strip a candy 
he asked for a transparent vase on his deathbed

Surrogate cell

take off the robe, black stars journey dead, fond
of red light in cracked glasses, no one remains 

jealous / is it jazz for the spider or a need for
coat in this rain, a surrogate cell, a glossy 

kiss, the time for mint did not end, you are free
to warm the water, a finger, this love

tomorrow will not bleed backward, an eye for
icy secrets, an eye for roads, fork our dreams

we are waiting for a garden cry, this thrill
can be found in trees & threes & jackets

Scrapbook

my body is a scrapbook: echo to echo
like a driveway filled with rain
—she cleans the mirror
to see where her scar is
going, where a string of
pink is stuck—it is
now clear that the lake is
new and that a
black goose now has a
way, like smoke
fading upside down: echo to echo

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David Ishaya Osu is a Nigerian poet, memoirist, street photographer and wanderer. His work has appeared in Magma Poetry, The Puritan, Plenitude, Poetry Wales, The Griffith Review, The Oxford Review of Books, and other places. David has an MA in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the University of Kent, and is the author of the poetry chapbook, When I'm Eighteen (2020).