poetry

Three Poems by Adefisayo D. Adeyeye by Adefisayo D. Adeyeye

This week, Potluck turns one!

What a year it's been. In the past 365 days, we've hosted over 100 different writers, photographers, illustrators, and videographers on this site. And we are, and continue to be, very proud of their work. 

So, in order to commemorate them and our one-year anniversary, each editor has decided to republish a work that he or she believes has fully exemplified Potluck, and the space we've created here.  It's seriously the least we could do.

* * *

calf-esque

 

Odysseus is waiting for a watcher, 

a white flag against the deep empty blue.

 

Ten whales already killed and clawed open 

with fingernails and splinters of warm wood, 

Odysseus remembers his childhood home falling to pieces, 

chalk white concrete spread out like elephant bones, 

 

dust pressed into the notches of their fingers and ghost prints 

all over the sun ripened grass. Soft, chewed 

into the cold hills around them. 

 

Odysseus sees mountains of wet meat and feels sorry. 

Everything he loves folded over, two layers of pink film 

and peach-soft insides, waves licking at the hull and Poseidon 

 

carved into the face of an Oceanside cliff. 

 

This is for my homies, Poseidon says 

as he spills palmfuls of the sea.

 

 

there are things coming to eat us but they are wonderful things

 

i sold my body to science. 

science sold it to someone i went to 

high school with. 

 

i lost fifteen teeth in the orgasm. 

she said something to rip the white open & 

i chewed the rain until it became 

 

a little kinder, 

a tiny china doll to crawl out from beneath the covers 

to kiss my elbows & just to be there. 

 

someone to take care of me 

when i am the only illegitimate thing, 

someone to coddle you when you are 

 

beaten & immense. i will deflate all the air 

out of you 

so you will not have to suffer all the 

breathing. 

i will break open into a thousand 

paper cranes. 

 

i will become the most cynical part of 

everything.

 

 

help my little bird body be close to you

 

i am the tinniest watchman in your pocket 

the way the smallest things and the largest 

are the same/     the hammer headed sharks 

bashing holes in your dads suv we never 

found, never let go of/     the quarters 

rumbling inside our cheeks, pressed together, 

cold and wet     sorry sorry sorry/     the way 

whales won’t even cry when people leave 

fingerprints all over their tombstones/     the 

way we snuck beer in your little brothers 

sippy cups/     and took turns tasting things in the 

backseat/     the way you pulled the quarters 

out my lips and put them into separate 

piggy banks/     the way you said you would 

save them all for a rainy day.

 

Adefisayo Adeyeye is a writer living in southern California. He blogs and reblogs at papercranechronicles.tumblr.com.