Ra gets dressed for the club

 

 

She slips on a filigree breastplate embedded with raw olympic australis

puts on last winter’s jeans that she ripped to denim shorts

 

on her fingers are Saturn’s moons

Hyperion next to Rhea on the ring      Dione, Titan on the middle

Tethys on her pinky

 

she takes a shot of rye and gilds her throat with black agate

 

tries on a pair of iron stilettos

tries on blanched white chuck taylors

tries on a pair of combat boots     with orange    soles

flares she says

 

she brushes her hair of lapis, asks me to help her fasten them into two buns

she pulls silver bone bobby pins from her elbow

 

& glances in the mirror

takes a shot of    absinthe  and sighs out a ten jade studs that she prods in her ears

 

 

She rouges her cheeks with the rising chests of dying men

 

 

ties a growling system of clouds to an ad-hoc kimono

 

 

She asks do I look pretty?

            her wrists splinter with glass bangles

her legs out-bronze themselves

 

 

She rubs her lipstick off with the back of her hand      and falls face-first on her bed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the sun in libra

 

rises at night

just above the dresser

where she keeps her altar

and currently is bent

chin to quartz

mouth agape and holding-

(to not wake her roommates)

her knuckles whiten

on the corners of what should’ve been juniper

but is teak

and doesn’t muffle itself against a wall

or a body

the hand up her skirt

is a foreign tremor

she                   bites an ash nib of holy wood

watches carnelian shudder to the floor

runs a tongue along crushed

amber-

last lost in her mouth

the alter burns

under    her breath

 

strips the varnish

 

the watery sun behind her

navigates an unruly waist

& holds her chin

to the mirror

reminding

her to watch.

 

∞

Yesha Townsend is a Bermudian writer and English lecturer at the Bermuda College. Her writing has been published or featured widely, including in The Bermudian Magazine, The Bermuda Anthology of Memoir & Creative Non-Fiction, Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing, Moko and The Bermuda Biennial 2022. She explores queerness through the lens of the black Caribbean experience, writes of home, of hurricanes, of Bermudian history, mythology, and folklore. These poems are from a collection of pieces focusing on the deification of the sun as an object of love, heartbreak, and infatuation.