From a Platonic Angle by Jane Akweley Odartey | ISSUE NINETEEN: Stymy A Seller

From a Platonic Angle

Jane Akweley Odartey

Say you’re love,
that you heart life
and snake through
vein a warm bloody
river that gifts tissues
vigorous wellness.

You’re it who erects
body pole-like on flat
soles to stroll breeze-like,
sprint wind-like in
grace. Magnificent
as wild grass springing from
the inaudible labour of long
fingered roots cusping moist,
cool darkness to supply
ever-evergreen through summer’s
blasting furnace. Your center

is not stomach, of course, but below the neck,
chested under skin, rip caged and leaning leftward

pOunding, pOunding
heartily as drummer of life—
playing music in joy, oozing calm to peace,
and sculpted long-faced by sorrow’s claws

when greed disrobes senses of contentment
and lower selves to serfs of flitting things.

Jane Akweley Odartey is a Ghanaian-American poet, writer, photographer, artisan and a local Teaching Artist at the Queens Museum. She blogs at janethroughtheseasons.com and her verse is forthcoming or has appeared in Clarion Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Amarillo Bay and elsewhere.

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