ARUN JEETOO

A Rambunctious Celebration

grandiose with colour confetti

and blue whimsical

banners and Kelewele cake,

presents galore

with an open-casket service

for my Caput Mortuum

in a coffin

waiting for sundown

to build myself back

in my own way;

soaring through midnight

luminous like Saturn’s face

wiser than yesterday

my phoenixian renaissance

incinerates the weak me

that is why

so much depends upon.

‘Cause the Plants Stop Making Food

The only language I am fluent in is cigarettes, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

Bills high up like Makalu by the front door, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

My heart has left me after suffering in love, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

My dead dog is squatting in my head again, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

I haven’t touched her and eaten any figs, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

Or stepped foot in the rancid warm shower, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

I tape up all the taunting mirrors in the flat, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

The fork sings its solitary moonlight hymn, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

God put breath in me, it’s twenty-five past, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

I can quote every episode of Orphan Black, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

The wooden floorboards are still meowing, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

She wants me to end the wars with myself, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

Outside my window are mink council flats, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

My hoodie reeks of rotten fish and oranges, ‘cause the plants stop making food.

One of the synonyms for ‘hazard’ is the speaker of this poem.

Arun Jeetoo is a British-Mauritian poet and English teacher from London. His recent poems appear in Corporeal magazine and Lemon Peel Press. His debut pamphlet, I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night, was published by Waterloo Press. Instagram @g2poetry.