Wall Of Women, Crumbling Bricks Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for Menka women following a massacre in Pinyin)

(i)

Does the whistling gale
tow an ambulance
with a cave of sleeping men

chatting only
with muttering tree branches
and zephyrs
stroking tight fists in pockets?

A mountain of a truck sits
on them, these three wailing
women in the clouds
of young sons lost to a red crater.

The volcano still rumbles,
coughing out blood
and distilled gore flying out
with red finches.

From the core of a garden
scarfed bells ring
flipping out red arms, throwing off

storm-chopped phalanges
of red flowers
and crawling vines trailed

to float with pebbles
scrambling for woven and stitched space
in the tributaries of red floods.

(II)

What feathery scarlet legs
have kicked air?
What fingers have crept in dust
alongside strayed low winds?

What worms have lost
skin and eyes
under swooshed-out showers of light?

Rumbling, drumming
wounded ditches
with voices of bassoon play clarinets,
rub and scrape numbed feet.

Showers of tree branches
have dropped too low
for a hunkered-down kiss
of bruised earth
baking sands on flowery wounds.

Why is the garden sinking,
every plant dropping flowers like pistols
with withered pistils?

(iii)

O rise, raise the fallen trees,
these crimson faces
crowned with garnet blossoms
from sky's currant corners

bored by spears of rain,
sliced by lances of swung gales.

How night spins
a red dress from a closet
of man's venom nibbling off
man in caves
of hippo mouths.

How mahogany clouds spiral
from deep angles
of crocodile fangs, sword-billed muzzles
spitting and chewing red rags.

Who dumps
only feathers in a cherry river
growing currant jackets?

The raking hands of a nimbus
pinch and scrape their faces
grown waterfalls.

In a hippo's mouth
Widened to a truck's carriage
bobs the wheeled bowl
of sculpted bodies
pasted and sealed on shredded air.

(iv)

On the wind-expanded
blackboard, a magma-faced teacher
waves a large patch,
a mirror of molars and wasps.

By a crumbling brick wall,
crackling popping ax-eaten trees

falling with three women,
three ditch-struck petals tumble
three storm-stung leaves flip over,

overlaid on tortilla slabs
with parched angles,
only bricks
and large-eyed lattices muttering.

Only a strayed moment
flows down
an overflooded river, debris growing
red lilies and fire ginger.

In the sun a wind flies
flapping a hawk's night wings.