May 25, 2026

by EDINAM DENOO

THE PERFORMANCE OF MIRACLES.

I drank my sins

like water turning into wine

& turned out fine.

I swallowed my mother’s

precise hate seared into

the back of my spine, with a love

that broke me into

the right type of anxiety 

& turned out fine.

I lived with a God

who forgot to have 

mercy 

& turned out fine.

My father

loved to shape

my body into a casket

pretty enough for burying

& turned out fine.

I climbed into my body,

swallowed the fear of wanting,

knotted into my gut, chewed

hard on the vulnerability of being seen,

scrubbed raw on love,

until it was hoarse. Until

it was gone 

& turned out fine.

I turned out fine! I turned out fine! I turned out fine!

I turned out fine! I turned out fine! I turned out fine!

I turned out fine! I turned out fine! I turned out fine!

I turned out fine! I turned out fine! I turned out fine!

I turned out fine! I turned out fine! I turned out fine!

I—

have carried my secrets,

honed my tongue,

held my body hostage—

performed little miracles

of death, to keep living

and turned out fine.

*

DEATH IS AS BRIGHT AS A SWALLOWING SUN

After Eloghosa Osunde

Eighteen: finds you alive, in the mouth of pleasure. 

               Curious hands picking apart 

petals of sunflowers blooming in the heat of your belly.

Twenty-One: finds you dead, on an altar, without mercy

                 Curious eyes watching your becoming,

sentence your being to how long your petals can wither.

Twenty-Eight:  finds you negotiating your lost years.

      You think there used to be history in that vein,

a memory in that flower. Absence has sketched itself in your mouth.

Thirty-One: finds you running away from God

             into the fork of the road, where death is led light

from a motorcycle—bright as the sun, breaking into sunset.