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Fool If You Think It's Over: First published in Kithe Journal, September 2021 | GJ Gillespie
bodies and butterflies
By Taiwo Hassan
once, i heard that flowers aren’t the only destination
for butterflies on a journey to quench their hunger,
that the human skin carries as much wonder
as the compact petals in marigolds and to these
colours in flight, sweat is another synonym for nectar.
this is where i condense into a sea of questions
about what a monarch butterfly perceived on my palms.
how do they trace the tracks of sweat
on every blob marked by these veins?
do they see a fresh type of freedom
on this endless brown or
do their wings find a special canvas
in its roughness?
can they harvest bloom in broken boys,
making every short hair adorning
their several pores into little lights?
can they weave their childhoods
into mementoes of beauty?
their wide eyes, can they split it into
an open heart—into witnesses
in the making of a miracle,
even only for a split second?
or are these flying mementoes creatures
on a quest for nothing but quick fixes
in sweat and blood, in skin and furs,
in frail bodies and fleshy cages,
is their nature proportional
to the innocence they ooze?
do their skies stretch into blue too?
riddle me this—how many countless souls
have my body sheltered?
has this sheath sharpened their bluntness?
underneath their rawness, do they carry a cosmos
of secrets and strangeness?
or are they also just butterflies
finding flowers in bodies like mine?
Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet and a vocalist. A 2x Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space and several other places. He's also an undergraduate student of Demography and Social Statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Osun State, Nigeria. His first chapbook, Birds Don't Fly For Pleasure is published by River Glass Books.
GJ Gillespie is a collage artist living in a 1928 farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, WA. A prolific artist with 20 awards to his name, his work has been exhibited in 64 shows and appeared in more than 140 publications. Beyond his studio practice, Gillespie channels his passion for art by running Leda Art Supply, a company specializing in premium sketchbooks. Whether conjuring vivid collage compositions or enabling other artists through exceptional tools, Gillespie remains dedicated to the transformative power of art.
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