Between Tuesday and Thursday, there is ____________

For some of us, it may just be another Wednesday, the middle of the work week, hump day.

At aaduna, it is our day to celebrate poetry and extol the sparkling words and intriguing themes that we get to present to our readership.  

Zavi Kang Engles (photo provided)

Today, Zavi Kang Engles takes us to her avenue; grabs our spirit, and propels us to skip, run, jump up, and then contemplate the Zavi spirit of discovery and reflection.    

Modernized Love

I get shy feeling the velvet of your eye

So many hands prune the lively tendrils of the world
From far away everything man-made looks like candy
But how many of us are still capable of a child’s delight?

Yet the up-close of the world is cloying too

Proximity nauseates
The blankets begin to stink of us

The evangelicals and techno-optimists dream the same warm dream

Of angelic hands churning another world like the miracle of butter  
But, stuck here for now, razing on reveals skulls—the condensed magic of bones
Depleting to sate a strange hunger, re-plated as democracy

That’s all

Far away again because here
I’m breathing beneath blankets until the room has shrunk down to
A world of panting lamp and furious bed and watching screens

Love shears off the worldly limbs

Devotion that provokes skin
I get shy feeling the velvet of your eye
Even as I reach for you 

* * *

*as if—or why I don’t lean in

Enter a room

With the confidence of astroturf and waterparks
As if the future
Isn’t climbing up your spine

Speak in the measured tones

Of a script rehearsed to syllables
As if the quavering
Is an affect not the sound of the heart shredding itself

Refuse

With the gravity of sculpted gargoyles
As if the artful deflections
you spend your life dressing up and testing out
Are inconveniences borne of a vacillating heart
A heart in need of a leader

Demand

With the cheerful buoyance of one never refused
As if you’ll really get it
As if you always had it

* * *

Zavi Kang Engles (photo provided)

Zavi Kang Engles is a writer and activist based in Chicago, Illinois. She received her bachelor's from Pitzer College and Master's from the University of Chicago. She can be reached at zavi.engles@gmail.com 

-------

aaduna - an online adventure with words and images - a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.

Help us build community!  Share with your friends,  "like" our Aaduna-Inc facebook page and follow us on twitter @ aadunaspeaks !  

 aaduna-Inc  Visit regularly for updates !