“Reasons” by Anora Mansour

Reasons 

Here silver fingered strings  
trembling with two Russian rings.
Recalling it all.

The reasons why we reared
   yardbirds long disappeared
   yet a cotton crop always reappears.

If sleep is a dotted dress
 then we wear this zero life.
And we are also a false bird’s chirp.
 
And never more deadly when 
we are chanting in time
 To that choral venomous rhyme. 

With those we gazed through gauze on the pew
 Those we once believed loved us too
incarnated us with gathered snowdrops anew.


BY ANORA MANSOUR
Copyright 2020

Dying Lover

Trace my lips
In low whispers
As I once wept psalms
over my dying lover.

Threaten that man
You will murder for me –
For my heart
is a cadence of silence.

I can only love you
if you creep through this life
dangling dangerously
as a ravenous red kite.

When we both
become one lonesome night.
And rub up to love up as a fight.

Oh, how I might love you,
bitter citron basket on my lap
Slumberly trusting me as a child.
I would open my thighs to you – a snap trap.

Perhaps then you could open the universe for me.

BY ANORA MANSOUR
Copyright 2020