Fayre Gabbro In The Land Of Isle Iffy
— after Carroll’s Alice, after Tutuola’s Ghosts
shrink into sun / the blue sky slung in your kitenge gownfeet-to-ass towards moon / full stop at beach / out a whalebone
door beneath the sand / its driftwood knob—open portal if
cursed & shadowhaunted / if distraught & seeking shelter
stepping down into Soft Heaven’s black oceanic palms
a calm wine tinkering within the gourds / a balm—blam!—for
the mad chatter from the dread blight of the sad haint’s white hair
escape the night as a queen of hart making domino
of constellations weaving through nonplussed wonderland / your
saga of hexes / your caterwaul a pillar of ghosts
Fayre Gabbro & The Trickster God Dossier
– i –
the goblin king, injured and hidingwithin the bush with hellhounds hot in abundance
turns to his small companion, the child Gabbro,
for whom is his charge and helps cover his escapes,
taught her he did in all the ways of The Whimsical World
the tears in his eyes a roux of his soul / the goblin king
injured and angered with iron teeth in his giant
head, talons of great graphite, his tongue a cocoon
of leathery gauze with spells fraying on his lips
his milk-quartz skin as white as a unicorn’s hind
and his wide bulbous eyes the perfect verdigris…
his dagger a slow moving sorrow, a long lumbering
ghost song rasping from its sheath…
Gabbro, the queen-child, with the knowing smile
her hand calmly in his unfurling claw like the pearl
safely in the clam; his paw scratching for skin, finds
an ossifying ore; an unscripted moment of laughter.
his golden vest, by now (on the surface)
a satchel of seeds, as the princess places,
in respect, her snapbean wand against his
chest—a burlap in decay & growing green….
– ii –
Fayre Gabbro weeps a river; Unoka’s name & all his pollens
—the tessera for her gris-gris to this day still.
Fayre Gabbro & The Fairytale’s End
—As Reported By The Poet Who Loved Her
the wolf that roamed these woods lovedGabbro, so much that villagers would
find her asleep in its mane, nestled
between tufts of sweet sultan, pillowed
atop garlands of globe thistle
she cast a fearsome shadow when straddled
upon her lycan steed, with every knight
& jacknape at her heel. but last night, down
by the estuary, the wolf’s head was found—
a stream of tears, wet & acrid, upon its cheek
her severed wrist cleaved & snarling from
its fangs, the dagger in her palm fanning sonnets
at the moon, the honey pouring from the wound
yet all-the-while fighting still with unseen forces;
and when the sun arose within the realm
every stalk of wheat burnt so green (to be
December) as ice on the trees set fire to itself
-all at once- as mynah wailed and choked out ashes:
every songbird in stark array / the air burnished
in softened ode, a detritus of verse—
“you shouldve seen it” the ravens sang,
a hallowness in their tears; “you shouldve
seen it” they cried their blackful burr
a perfect harrow trawling sorrows,
deep & taut, over lake & lea
and without a sovereign song the village
withered— never finch or crow to again
take wing. so the poet in distress declared
war upon his eyes, the brimstone
pouring from his emptied sockets:
he roamed every corner until (in full
descent, without the guide of muse or madness)
he burned the fields & took up sword,
he swallowed sea & became a king,
encysting world in rust & stone;
for gone was the seed for his conceit—
the Girl with the Tattoo of Frantz Fanon;
every ember on this stridden path weeping at
our loss—but could this be truly how
the story folds for our Wayfarer of All Rainforests,
Guardian of All Trenchant Beulahs? for our
Obinrin Lati Omi, the Boss Belle of Kirinyaga Woods?
surely, it’s ill-come thinking this is how
her saga abates, because every fade to black
is not a loss in light but a thickening glaze—
the world, by choice, turning from its faience
to the dislimns of Love; but as any grizzled gawlo
knows after the vast eclipse a nascence always
follows: the peckish Day—as composed by Night—
ingests the carol then craves lament
& thus, in true, our tale begins; like a scent
of honey on the breath of a dying wolf.
Fayre Gabbro & The Duppy Of Dreams
you’re not from around hereyes, I’m within a dream
i’m within a dream as well
see—the clouds are calling
the stars refuse sitting still
perhaps we’re within a poem
then we both are as fawns?
yes, we both are fawns, such is true
this love then a temple?
our love, yes, a temple
and we are light?
and we are darkness with a hydrant
of stars, a living coal within the clouds;
come hither, Sweet Kite of Harrowed Hope,
and carry us throughout the sky
how proclastic you are in beauty
revealing to us the future
a perpetual lux;
our sorrows peeling
the wick of tongue
our alphabets trimmed by sallow wax,
we break the dim of flaxen language
a signpost ahead, severed limbs forming arrows
“This Way To The Soapstone Castle”
this dream is both chimerical quest
and fay cogitation!
no this was always a poem
when were we ever not the syllables
an overlapping song
this long-lost syntax of embrace
romancing a renaissance
to be lost in Langston if not Elhillo,
if not Farrokhzad or Osman
so Gwendylonian to the touch
a Finney for your thoughts
to be Fagunwa-like, black and-
Ngugian as ever, graceful & comely
like Alice In The Bush Of Ghosts
paying tithe to a vassal of bones
down the houngan hole
with our mad tenacious chatter
a Cheshire Himes
Check the Rhime of the Ancyent Mari Evans
drunk in the privileges forbidden
the spiritual osmosis of privilege
with our oaths munificent to gossamer & melanin
yes we too can privatize a lyric
a prize or a peeve
no capricious lore of others to travel at us
no facetious fable
a lore that travels with us
perhaps even through
proof we are not trapped by dreams
and the industrialization of hope
joy lingers beneath the rib
unfolds into provincial laughter the pollen of light
we must indeed be floral!
who said we lacked nectar to our veins
with fairytales barren and falderal
but which came first, the quickening—
or the powder keg?
we are as one a bouquet of poems
each pore a village of children
vessels of blood branching through the nimbus within
this is how we raze with voice
apotheosis in the breasts of Onyame
and yet they keep asking Occam of us!
how parsimonious!
their philosophies on skin a speculative slogan
a science wrapped in slender vocab—
reciting history with dehydrated jargon
but there is no desiccation to praise Gabbro
drought has no wings for the like of us
we skim the core of a nascent earth
unsnared by the nets of Ogbunabali
Anikulapo:
our slang is incessant
expositions free of enucleation
you are a poet
we are architects
we scaffold the sun
to drift asleep in Her Great Adumbral Bosom,
to awaken as dawn over soft republic in the
stadiums of commonwealth, tiers upon tiers
you are from here
we never left
not a once
you closed your eyes and found the dark
i found an echo
or some annunciation
a duende deep within
and when i open my eyes
to augur the morn
i catch my breath
and we double down.
upfromsumdirt reads: Fayre Gabbro In The Land Of Isle Iffy
upfromsumdirt is a speculative poet and visual artist from Lexington. He is the author of Deifying a Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), and The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023) — three collections forming an aesthetical trilogy of whimsy, politics, and social commentary. dirt (as Ronald Davis) was awarded a Kentucky Al Smith Award in Art in 2010, and his art has appeared on several book covers and been galleried in several venues throughout Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. To find out more about him visit his website at: https://upfromsumdirt.com/
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