The Prostitutes of Allen Avenue by Oyin Oludipe

It’s a smoky street: but not from
Earthly flames of woe where
Posh hormones drape the heavens
In sediments, where night falls to
A sudden orchestra of elevations, where
Lilies of the valley turn flesh cuisine for
Discreet vegetarian passions.
.
It’s a smoky street. Three boiling tubers saunter
Down the arcade in solemn quest
For the hoe. It’s a strange harvest for
An unsound economy that spells a farmer
To spill his seeds. And, alas, in unsound light,
Each hour is reaping time. Foreign granaries
Are filled; a ride price will be waged
To learn the rise and fall of a new body language.
.
Each hour is confession time: not of the straying
From God or from the light, but of beauty
And what it sought to buy, but failed to
Strangle. “Weren’t cleavages sculpted
By divine hands? Let this one cost you
My humanity.” Salivation summoned, an unfair trade
Is sealed in sense’s lassitude. “Fine! That should compensate.”
.
But this present void is sublime, cast with
Neptune eyes — each bats itself to a battle cry,
Each stride eases the crooked doorways
Of earth, and each thigh is a palace
Into the shadows, ushering sail-wing birds
Of petals in tidal waves. Each presence is
An absence. Limbs do not ground the heart.
And absence, perhaps, is abstinence —
Of a different kind.
.
Yet this present void celebrates the rites
Of dusk, with fire and without a god;
.
It’s a smoky street.
