KB Brookins
KB Brookins is a writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They are the author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press 2022) and Freedom House (Deep Vellum 2023). KB is a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts fellow. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Sonnet Five
after Isha Camara & 2023 Tin House Megan Fernandes Workshop
There is a fruit the hue of ketchup. The fruit
dangles from my evergreen childhood tree.
Botanists call it Juniper. I see it
& my mind automatically taints leaves
with the chasm of memory. Again
proceeds the exploding structure of epithets;
once more, the rupture of language
overheard from the lips a love-lost man.
I hid behind a tree. My father called me
anything but the name of god. Now I am
a figment of fissures spilling out
from Jupiter, a quiet May noon’s
sinister background. How cruel, queer nature’s breeze.
Little ants and honeybees will carry my casket.
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© 2024 Iron Oak Editions
© 2024 Iron Oak Editions
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