Beaton Galafa
if i were you
i would not know what to choose too
between the sun and light from the moon.
last night i slept well with my face stuck
into bits of wood we grew old on
& felt your hand stretching into a corner
in a dream with a fly on a curtain
& toilet walls. i etched my nightmare
with a joke about two or three little devils
on the fence outside our home startled
with the sun-ness of my wife & the cacophony
of two fine dogs growling in the winds.
i am a papyrus rotting on a riverbed
rooting for archaeologists & aqualungs
to rescue me from the coldness of decrepitude.
tell my mother i feast on moss & drink
from shells of a turtle that is stuck and
slowly drowning in a muddy plot of these
waters, with me.
About the Author
Beaton Galafa is a Malawian writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. His work appears/is forthcoming in Mistake House, Fourth & Sycamore, Stuck in the Library, Birds Piled Loosely, The Shallow Tales Review, Writer’s Egg Magazine, Necro Magazine, Love Like Salt Anthology, 300K Anthology, Literary Shanghai, Every Writer’s Resource, The Bombay Review, The Maynard, Birds Piled Loosely, Atlas and Alice, South 85 Journal, Corpses of Unity/Cadvres de l’Unité, and elsewhere.