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
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).