Two Poems by Oluwaseun Olayiwola
PN Review 270, March - April 2023
Beacon
Just secrets to the sea
is what we were, the moon
inside us, waxing,
as if astonishment, slipping
like oysters through
our throats, were
a type of force, the frozen
girdle of purple lips
struggling,
not to breathe, but with breath –
In the end, we made it
to the lighthouse, which was
never the point.
We climbed a ladder to the top
because there were no stairs
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Night on the Thames Path To have settled in the fraternal space between play and fight To have, along the river, heard their names hovering in the head like an intellect of loss To have bequeathed each name to a seabird posturing in the black water they sprung from: his name for the coot, his for the moorhen, his, the cormorant, the mute swan at last lifting off its majesty as if the river were not its birthplace, were not where it watched you run unevenly, run as if the mind could be abandoned behind like ambition; to have existed, to have loved, to have been in your existing, your loving, rare the way a bone deep in the rivered is still apart of the assembling landscape as your foot steps far above on the shore in the sand into a beige never-thereness – All my beloveds. Somehow, it is like they were never there –
These poems by Oluwaseun Olayiwola are taken from PN Review 270, March - April 2023. The third poem in this issue is available in the archive to paying subscribers, as well as more poetry, features, reviews and reports from across the back catalogue.
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