"Polyamory Defense #324" by Kemi Alabi

Polyamory Defense #324

Master of No Chill dates the Superintendent of Chest Pain County
who’s married to a forest turned endless blaze
who’s fucking a planet eighty percent gilded ash—
that part’s a mess, but the body’s more riddle
than liar. The body is just information. 
Breath nowhere breath vanished means 
I miss you, please touch me. Sometimes more 
I miss touch, sometimes more you please me. 
More please me. More you and you and you
are more than bomb shelters, let’s baba a village, 
warm our bodies back to real hearthed homes.
But where’s the love poem for me, my partner, 
their partner, our lovers and their rented doms? 
No hymns, no church. Shoulders our altars. 
Like everything we need, impossible. 
Then imagined. Then desired.
Then made by trembling hands. 
Gods bless the houses this love builds.

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Photo Credit: Ally Almore

Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery and Leslie Feinberg Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library's Best Books of 2022. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, Kemi now lives in Chicago, IL. Find more at kemialabi.com and @kemiaalabi.

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