pangaea

the setting is our lips—white, frosted, resembling iced honey buns, better yet, glaciers. the wind whistles and chaps them the more. every flake of dead skin a hill for these insults to climb. dried blood in the cut, like frozen magma—the remnant of yesterday’s dozens and dozens of yo momma jokes having now healed. today is fat jokes galore, while we all binge cosmic brownies. in the backdrop are skinny jokes harmonizing over the orchestra of clanging ankles. we joke about diabetes too, while sipping high fructose corn syrup by the gallon, the sugars eroding lips orphaned by vaseline. gradually, the degradation of our lips is forming a landscape. and when these landscapes rub together, it means we are cracking and we are roasting and we are sparking and we are flaming on the corner of forest and fire. our voice boxes turn tinderboxes as we make you look and then make you look again. as we say you look like so-and-so or this-and-that. as we got’eeeemm and got’eeeemm again. hear the laughs rumble and shake. the seismic plates in our diaphragms contort our lips into shapes undiscovered. we lick those lips, our tongues sprinkling natural springs and extinguishing hurt feelings. then we dap hands and drift apart like continents.

ISAAC AKANMU

Isaac Akanmu is a Nigerian American from Staten Island, New York. Now living in Charlotte, North Carolina, Isaac was the recipient of the 2023 Charlotte GoodLit Fellowship. His poetry chapbook, not belonging anywhere (2022), is available from Bottlecap Press. His words also appear in Jellyfish Review, Posit Journal, Olney Magazine, and elsewhere. Connect with Isaac at isaacakanmu.com and on social media (@insteadofisaac).