Die, Eventually

Your name won’t slip
past my lips unsolicited,
but I’ll write you out
like washwomen

with thick wrists
wring out dirty water
from cloth.
I’ll drain you

like poison
let from my pen,
until my red
eyes are put to bed.
This fire will

die, eventually,

like the flames
of trick candles
on birthday cakes.
Each line a hearty blow.
 
 
Hawa Allan is a lawyer and a writer of cultural criticism and fiction whose work has appeared in, among other places, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Tricycle Magazine, where she is a contributing editor. She has previously published poetry in the New York Quarterly.