Edward Michael Supranowicz
Here, grief is a cliche
A body, sowed on the lands of rapture, the mouth //
fed with Valerian water // a boy preying prayers into his
grief-stricken body // his chest— a cleaving,
who will fill the aperture of this body with roses & tulips
& not cactuses?
Nightly, a boy shapeshifts into a poem & the arms drags
him away from the mouth of a suicide rope, //
Dear God, who burns himself by setting the poem
on a pyre?
Dear God, who turns himself into a billow of smoke
just to escape with the air?
This poem // another smokescreen for the shots
that split a chest //
This poem // another threnody for boys caught
between the ligature of an acacia
This poem // another hymn for boys slotting Sylvia
Plath as a masquerade beneath their poems.
Abdulkareem Abdulkareem (Pānini) (he/him), Frontier III, is a Nigerian writer, he studies Linguistics at the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. His poem was shortlisted for the top 20 poems of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize (NSPP) 2021 & the top entries of the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (August/September) 2021. His works appear/forthcoming on Poetrycolumn NND, Shallow Tales Review, Brittle Paper, Ice Floe, Feral, Rigorous, Second Chance lit, Olney magazine, Window Facing Window Review, Celestite Poetry, Sledgehammer lit, Salamander ink, Afro literary magazine, Lunaris Review, Kissing Dynamite, Afrocritik & elsewhere. He is a member of The Frontiers Collective. He tweets @panini500bc. Instagram panini_500bc.
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.