[Kissing Booth] a poem

                                                                 A part-time lover

is a full-time fool

& what do you suppose

becomes of a fool’s lover?

What’s an odalisque

if not one to take on the

cadence set by a deception so

necessary for her to cope with

her imprisonment?

Dontrell Lovet't

-from "Degradation"

[The Failed Writer]

[Exiles] a poem

We can invent ourselves twice over at the last moment

 facing a feeling of nothing,

a rigor of the meager,

 a leaf merely turned,

- but by now we’ve been disenfranchised

 from our own selves,

left exiled to find a new home

away from our old.

Dontrell Lovet't

from, [Leitmotif]

[All the While the Power-Play] a poem

            You look so pretty today,

like an undeniable, undenied happiness,

& the power-play,

the night before the

last we spent together,

was predictably pleasurable,

releasing the most molecular

of myself into the wide, culpable

fauces leading down into the warmth

of your core-

-this was the day I found myself

face to face with a woman I suddenly

didn’t want nor wanted to be wanted,

if snakes were perpetually made in

the image of you,

they’d strike relentlessly,

unprovoked,

the friends you’ve scattered

like the plagues of old,

have returned, reconciled in our

confederacy;

the isolation,

the biome exceptional for

conjuring slaves,

has grown dense & rich

oasis-

-now you can go,

& as you go, you should

know your power-play has

played itself into predictability

now serpents made in your

image can be exiled from this place

in me,

or stand petulant to be

cut down to extinction-

-from [UnderStudies]
Poem by Dontrell Lovet't
Photography by Nosmot Gbadamosi