Poetry
by thegorkogazette

‘THE NEW NORMAL’ by Prosper Ifeanyi

THE NEW NORMAL

The bulb flickers as if beckoning to the room.
The whiskey becomes eloquent, and all is at
once still. The faucet musics atop a sink and
the vibratile cringes to the mad rattling louvre.
A stray toast at every corner in sight, the kettle
snoring with a barometric heave. The doornail
eating away the crust of wood like a blight.
And this, is what I call normal. The abstracts
speak their own languages; we just don’t hear
them enough. Does your neck feel your collar?
Do you ever think why the body, made of sand,
cannot hold water? Why does my father suddenly
want me to speak Arabic? The lilacs I kept as a
boon now withers, and with it, my desire for
surprises. Girls no longer churn at the mention
of love letters so my mother made me a robe of
many colours to get the men. So when I say:
mother, I looked at a man the way I never should,
she called that the new normal.

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Prosper Ifeanyi is a Nigerian writer. His works are featured/forthcoming in Identity Theory, Lumiere Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Salamander Ink Magazine, Kalahari Review, Terror House Press, Aôthen Magazine, 2022 Libretto Anthology and elsewhere. Reach him on Twitter and Instagram @prosperifeanyii

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