“Examining for mixed motives the flaws/That turned their city-cousins ash-/Grey. She labels one Snow-in-Ghana,/As though she doesn’t trust her own desire.”
Cabbage Whites flutter Elsie’s summer heart—
She’s busy dissecting her men again,
Pinning them down on reproduction,
Spreading their wings with her wild laugh.
In their natural habitat, they stray
Like the Horn-Rimmed glasses on her face,
Magnifying the flowers they light on. Days
On end she traces the biology,
Prim as a Bluestocking. As she’s black
It could be that she likes them under glass,
Examining for mixed motives the flaws
That turned their city-cousins ash-
Grey. She labels one Snow-in-Ghana,
As though she doesn’t trust her own desire.
Gabriel Gbadamosi is an Irish-Nigerian poet, playwright, and critic. His London novel Vauxhall, which was released with Telegram Books, won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. He presented the BBC Radio 3 flagship arts and ideas program Night Waves and is the founding editor of WritersMosaic.
