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Cora Dessalines
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the poet
Cora Dessalines is a queer, London-based freelance writer. They were former assistant editor of their university’s creative writing magazine ~FACTORY~ and editorial assistant at Guts, an independent publisher of memoirs and short-story anthologies. Cora has had their work published in Lacuna, a literary magazine that showcases the writing of young women and non-binary people of colour. They are a lover of fashion, space and anything colourful, and are currently at work on their first afrofuturist science-fiction novel for adults.
the poems
takotsubo cardiomyopathy
they say it feels like
s
i
n
k
i
n
g
that tectonic plates shift
and create fissures
wide enough to
swallow you whole
quite the opposite, in fact
it isn’t quicksand
nor an overlap of
scrambling hands and clawing fingers
craving to drag you
under
no, it is a rupture
in the laws of physics
a losing battle
between mass and energy
where gravity knows
no bounds—
it is the feeling of your feet
g
n
i
t
f
i
l
and your body capsizing
gnizispac
to mould with
this wretched world in which
you rise,
climbing the clouds,
your head facing the ground
all the way
they say it feels like a cavernous well
but the devil is a liar
that chilly water is the fluid in your lungs, sib
the build-up from elevating to
such high altitudes
where dew droplets crystallise
on your eyelashes and
your oxygen is slowly snatched
while you ascend them six layers
as punishment by this,
a most wicked cosmos
to be honest, you should’ve guarded
your rassclart heart instead of
looking up and thanking the universe
for blessing you with syrup and silver
and steadfast loyalty
that love was on loan, little horror
and the night sky tricked you
into thinking those were jewels
stitched onto a dark tapestry
instead of black sheets
stuck on using a roller
and wheat paste
i wish i could’ve warned you
the light you saw
are just bullet holes
we call stars.
so this is love
i want it to be glorious.
i want us to douse ourselves in it
to take a match
in each hand
light them
and set ourselves
on fire!
our mixed ashes must
ripple and rumble
until we, two phoenixes,
rise
birthed from the pyre
of our own making—
it needs to be … ravenous.
and make us forsake all earthly foods
save the tongue-plucked cherries
that grow above our inner thighs,
swallowed and savoured
a sempiternal reminder that
we are the fruits of a supernova,
dual spheres of magma.
we will steal matter from each other
like two thieves in the night
gorging in tandem
lava—
combust
we
until
i only want it
if it’s going to bring me
beyond the brink of destruction
and make astronomers believe
planets will form from we,
these dead stars’ disk.
stars above, it must be r a p t u r o u s!
and so fucking consuming
that my lungs
become your air
becomes my lungs
fill faster than what
my breath can catch.
trust, we best be willing
to lean over balconies
sever our bloodlines
and make a pact
that our hearts may only
beat
at the same time
as each other
or else, leave us permanently breathless.
… i want it to leave us breathless.
because to us that is love.
love in reverse
legend has it our meeting made flowers blossom
in the gloom of winter, spurred leaves into
elevating back to their branches as they shifted from
red
yellow
to green again with every day we spoke
we, two divergents, formed our own timeline
and while everyone else’s nights came quicker
the sun would spread its arms
just for us,
purposely setting
when the rest of the world rose for work
this was back when i thought my love
for you shattered laws
when i believed the night we met
caused mangoes to grow in the north pole
like a unity of contradiction
sprouted from life’s continual war of opposites
instead of lying in that field of tension
i made my love for you alter
the meaning of cause and effect
in the hope i could understand how
the imprint of your head on my shoulder
was there before i even knew you
see, i used to think we would be infinite
to spite the general line, that even though
we’d submitted to the logic of change,
pledged our lives to
nada hay absoluto y todo revoluciona
me and you would stay the same
but this was back before i knew my honesty
would have me barred indefinitely,
would have my words
chewed up and spat back to me
at a later date, with the mushy remnants of them
laid on my palm like a spoiled crop
you told me afterwards you didn’t want us
to end like this
but i’d already washed my hands
i only wish you hadn’t waved the wrong red flag, my love
it was better when whatever we were was an unspoken thing,
curved into your left cheek like a tiny sickle
it is said our meeting unravelled the rules
of the cosmos, burned the cool red stars
so hot we made one another tremble,
as proof that in the last analysis
we could’ve won this world together
if either of us just had some compassion
now the thought of you reminds me that
we are in the time of monsters, running parallel
to each other so that our contradictions never overlap,
never reveal that me and you were in the bloom of life,
from a planet where you don’t refuse to see me
even after i beg the politburo for a meeting
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb