Dying Room

Where solitudes never sleep
On the crusted browns of bamboo, latched
At flank of newborn, slung
By the flaccid gaunt, of their forearms –
Fastening the ritual frail, of frames
In etiquette set for the feast, of gangrene.

Where the wasted shroud of reject
Is etched as an echo of truth
On every wall that dare face, the defaced
And vow never to expose, the entrails
Of end-trail moments, of gasping, heaving
Corpse of toddlers’, belch and breath of acetone.

Walls have been torn, by look-aways
Left in the mulch of decay, made stomach
Of swallowed sympathies, saw infants rot
By rites of abandon, sung
With the séance of sîwáng –
Like rattling, rickets of bone.

Where parents are the savage, of spectres
Stalking glass-blades, of gazes
Through abyss of orbits, gorges and gape
Of the rugged fonta
nelle –
The first fruit of famine, displayed
By the famished, of fondle.

Dying room: a place where love and nutrition-starved orphans are left to end their days.
Sîwáng: Chinese word for “death”.