Learning to Translate the Code of You: A Pantoum by Prosper Ifeanyi

In a tale about yearning, my beloved is a bright abyss

Learning to Translate the Code of You: A Pantoum

by Prosper Ifeanyi

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All the ways we have rippled into a song.
All the ways everything sings & wears us inside out
Like the unhidden marrow of the sun’s tentacles.
I gave up my light, & there was no lonelier way to say it.

All the ways everything sings & wears us inside out:
White-washed exoskeleton, grim-paled leaf, moon-screened
Skin, giving up light— there was no lonelier way to say it.
In a tale about yearning, my beloved is a bright abyss,

An exoskeleton, a grim-paled leaf, a moon-screened skin.
Here, only I can elegize the photographs of youth we may never have.
In a tale about yearning, we long to touch the bright abyss
But that, too, is something the body cannot unfunerate.

I elegize the photographs of youth, that I may never have
To leave your side. I am with you in ableness & cancer.
I know there are things the body cannot just unfunerate,
But trust me I am learning, learning to translate this code of you.

First published in Muzzle Magazine, Issue 36, Spring 2025.