Nearness
Half past seven and
afflicted with such sudden lowness so often no longer sudden
just low
dark sunset small orange left
the sky’s a stupid canvas
it’s all formless good things have form that’s what skeletons are for
not for cradling falls from towers
certainly not that nor
the crunch of cannibalism
when one bites their nails no lower then like a mole
I’m digging deeper
like bellybuttons Plato’s there
he hates me hate poets I’m banished
lower then so put on
shoes
walk
with each low foot until
sidewalks become mountains
and so the panting follows something real
actually real
real as the thickening
of a child’s bones from mash to marrow
to footsteps real
as the fact of it as simple as an apple
does with its sugars real
as going outside being proud, proud of myself for trying
but where are the apples I thought there’d be apples
Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana. He is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Nearness, winner of The New Delta Review 2020-21 Chapbook Contest judged by Brandon Shimoda. He has served as a Ledecky Fellow for Harvard Magazine and the first Diversity and Inclusion Chair of The Harvard Advocate. His writing has received support from Tin House, Brooklyn Poets, the Community of Writers, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. His poems are published or forthcoming in Lana Turner, The Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Salt Hill Journal and elsewhere.
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