Utibe Hanson

Longlisted Poem: “Nothing More” and “Collocation”

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Nothing More

The night is the mind of King Leopold 

—historical offender, made guiltless by 

the colour of his sin 

I have held my heart to the storm 

in search of a lost bearing, but the 

tracks lead always to a cliff 

I devolve, grief to grief, ash to ash 

and swept downhill by the wind— 

not with a matched hunger of 

the egrets to speckle the space with

flair but fog 

It is an unbearable condition of being 

to be tethered to sound, but cannot sing, 

cannot laugh, and cannot find a language 

for your voice 

It does not vex me that everyone 

has a recommendation for me, 

it vexes me that they aren’t me 

Against the currents of an eclipse, 

I wade through the length of an oath 

to script my way into a new covenant 

I have joined myself to poetry, 

leave me alone.

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Collocation

I judge a word by the company it keeps— 

If I find dark, I ask, At what point did the light go out? 

The answer is first a forgetting 

—a spiralling into fog, before eventual dissociation 

A distance stretches and the journey 

f fatigue comes to no end 

—silence meets silence in masks 

of wellness or nothingness when asked 

how are you? or what is wrong? 

It is a maze of shattered mirrors, 

each splinter with its image 

anchorless in the rupture 

The weight is too much with the world, 

so intrusive thoughts begin a game 

of noose-knotting that makes 

jumping into water peaceful from the hoop 

Or through salvation in a cup, 

the loneliness disappears and 

you become dressed in your best shadow