Orphan (n)
Greek: Orphanos: fatherless: literally: deprived -Orbho: bereft from father
My father is in the audience and he is smiling and he is a ghost and this
scares you but not me because I aint afraid of ghosts, they just got unfinished business and he placed big bets on the only thing he had left in this world
Every time I write a poem about him a bird flies out
my chest don’t ask what kind of bird because I don’t know, it flies straight
to the sun and explodes before I can even see it. All
I got is a featherless chest full of wings. All I got is a fatherless chest full
of bones. All I got is a chest but the treasure
is for the drowned. The gold is a poison that either takes years or five seconds,
but it will take.
if I drop a jewel & don’t give you permission to pick it up, then you have stolen water from an empty well, then you have demanded blood from the daughter
of death, then you have a merciless law, then you have a life
spent in a spoiless war. Then you see her tail. Then you see her teeth.
Have you ever seen the sirens father? He sits on a throne,
fashioned from skulls of non-believers.
Siaara Freeman
Siaara Freeman is 27 years of dramatic entrances and exits & from Cleveland Ohio. She is a 2016 Pushcart Prize Nominee, 2016 Best New Poet nominee, 2017 Bettering American Poetry nominee & a 2017 Button Chapbook Contest finalist. She is the founder of online magazine wusgood.black and an editor for Tinderbox Literary Journal. She is the current coach for the Detroit Brave New Voices team. In her spare time she is growing her afro so tall God mistakes it for a microphone & speaks into her. You can find some of her work in CrabFat Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, and Black Napkin Press.
Artwork: Stellart, The Cage
Website: https://stellartcorsica.deviantart.com/
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