Exogenesis

Exogenesis

Exogenesis 1440 1920 Teneile Warren

I
Among them,
There is nothing,
Collected,

Five mango trees
Two julie
One East Indian
A number 11
A hairy

Their building
A soliloquy on ancestry
Their home slotted above the city limits
In a fruit kingdom
Between the nominal and the enduring
A red dirt holey road
An ascent
A sign: no sanctuary lives here
Held on
A white chipped
swollen porous soluble gate

The mangoes,
All the mangoes

The seed, rotted

The sign, imagined
Me,
Awakened with the dew
The wanting, absent,
On the list of daily chores

II
Missing:
Red Stripe
Ambrose, Walsh at opposite ends of the pavilion
The invasive snore, Father’s
Saturday Soup
I do not eat
Weekday, pressure
Cooker surprise
Salad,
Lettuce from the ditch
Fevergrass- the rum and coke’s olive

The stranger,
Singing in the next room

My brother
Mother’s
Ackee, saltfish, bacon, roas’ breadfruit,
and her laugh
Gapped conversations with…
Used tins of mackerel
Jackfruit staining my lungs

The middle child’s hated
The sound of the microwave at two a.m.
The judgement of his misunderstandings
A supermarket list has never been written

III
The stranger singing
In the next room, my brother
Gapped conversations
With…, the middle
Child’s hated,
The judgement,
Of his misunderstandings, collected
I remember
Me, the wanting absent
From the list of daily chores

IV
The budding:
Five mangoes: two julies, one east Indian, a hairy
A number 11
The mangoes,
All the mangoes
Soliloquy on ancestry
At dawn,
swallowing
The East Indian

A birthing defect?

5

I leave, Left

Am leaving, Left

Said to be leaving, Had left

Header photograph © Sarah Huels.

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