Spontaneous Poetics: Smoke Sky by Golnoosh Nour

SMOKE SKY

After Dennis Cooper

The sky is so tight I want to puncture it with my eyes.

All the boys I wanted

turned up in my mother’s funeral

in masks and niqab and no this did not

make them hot

nor did they make me cum

Every woman I’ve ever loved plunged

her pens deep inside my smoked out lungs

And sucked my blood

raw and no

it was not hot

I have war fatigue but my frustrations make me strong

I scoot around this ghost town too pissed off to be suicidal

Been there and done that, selfish and selfless, I smirk and the sky is sable-black

like my mind

I bathe in my dirt and urine and count the stars I have

Fucked. I am filled with filth and this knowledge

makes me a nervous saint.

Dr Golnoosh Nour is the author of Sorrows of the Sun (2017) and The Ministry of Guidance (2020).