Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
Signature
by
Tolu Ogunlesi
1
Who sits in your cockpit,
Sweaty hands fixed upon your controls -
God, or Darwin?
Who spins your machine out of the path
Of my buzz-seeking swipe;
Programs you to fly light
On your outbound journey, elusive
As light; and to return loaded
With blood, sluggish, half-doomed?
2
Splattered,
On the wall beside my bed,
Your bloody memory.
You never said
Much, allowing instead
Those whining wings
That fed on dreams
And darkness
To do all the speaking.
3
Who will bear your spirit to eternity,
And build a memorial at the site
Where you will lie,
A blood-bearing boeing,
A living signature,
A darkening memory.
Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
Tolu Ogunlesi
Nigeria
Tolu Ogunlesi was born in 1982. He is the author of a collection of poetry Listen to the Geckos Singing From a Balcony (Bewrite Books, UK, 2004). His fiction and poetry have appeared in Wasafiri, The Obituary Tango (Caine Prize Anthology 2006), Sable, Orbis, Eclectica, and elsewhere, and are forthcoming in Conceit Magazine and Absynthe Muse Review. In 2007 he won a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry prize. He currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
