Impermanence

By Osahon Oka

Your hands shake the tray,
the cup scatters its hypodermic needles
of piercing light, liquid trembling
around its rim & then, spill comes
gently & sudden to its own impermanence:
a puddle slowly closing its eyes.
You let the incoming crash meet
the sound the tiles have held
in their womb, their thirst
worming along their white lines,
dragged by bile leaking from the soft quiver
between half opened lips,
still brackish & ready to fold back
into shore, into the singsong float
of another sad high, another alto
slowly decaying into EKG hum:
all the angels gathered to keep the watch
inching closer like wings,
their glory darkening.

BIO:
Osahon Oka is a Pushcart prize and Best of the Net nominated poet writing from Benin City. He is a winner of Visual Verse Autumn Prize, 2022. His poems are on PepperCoast Lit, Jalada Africa, Brittle Paper and elsewhere. He can be reached on Twitter @onyemazua7735.