Aja Bailey
Bug Angel
There’s a patch of nimbus on its face as it enters
the warm chewed jaw under tummy
Bug angel says it’s standard hi to the smooth face daddy
Waxing gibbous as crickets hum from the mahogany bush
A sister or many stewed from the nerves of belly venom
Clamor of kisses and cries with peppered breaths wrapped
with seismic waves that pinballed the critter down
to never taste floral nectar or touch wing to sun spills
You created me it thanks the ephemeral darling
Ticklish blue lady licks the sleek salt cheek until comes
a new dawn that mimics heaven with a pretty hue like
dreams of motherhood that waits to sing
Ex from Baton Rouge
You introduced me to Daniel Johnston an hour after you showed me
the polaroid of you holding your son with the coffee or bourbon or
bland tea stain at the bitten corner
Even cliché beverage met your child before me
I dip the week-old napkin into my chai to aim fire
my love towards another incompatible flat object
without the pretended future of family and more sons
or promises of unworldly amounts of shrimp and rice
I stopped blessing my food to save all my thanks to your
Grandma’s gumbo that her Bible page hands nurtured from her previous
Queens of kitchens that my spaghetti stained Tupperware
nor I will ever touch tongue
I withheld access to God to eat from the hands of a Babylon
You want her back? The decadent one with the lemon and basil
print skirt and natural locks down her belly with gold clips to add
antique elegance like echoes of jazz and old wood?
The one that shares the same spirit of southern sticky sugar heat and
danceful souls too wild to write about?
You told me you fell for her praline blemish face and Renaissance aura
and you still crave for the plastic green justice beads that
doesn’t mix with your cocoa butter skin as oppose to my jade house
I built during walks on wobbly yellow-bricked hope
She ran away with my worried shoes and your dick worried
Is this the definition of passing the baton?
room
plant to a FIJI
My fellow oxygen bae:
the imaginary life of the cute paint blue and
pink eye taunts me atop Adam’s artesian lagoon mixed with
saliva and teeth plaque laced with chatter from
cracked Vaseline lips.
My baked earth bed covered in decayed and young
droplets of me in this too small bowl I outgrew lost time ago.
She neglects you too over
strawberry açaí lemonades
sweet wine
daydreams of paradise
to revitalize her liver and candy her skin moles.
Her yet-used English degree draped with a fake garden rose
bouquet she caught with hope at a wedding.
We should’ve known then she chooses
faux elements over legit chow
at least the irony gives us authentic sun
Aja Bailey is a writer and serial napper residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Her work has been featured in Duende, Boshemia Magazine, Gambling the Aisle, TROU Lit Mag, Backbone Mountain Review, and Sans Merci. Buy her a strawberry acai lemonade, and she’ll have a dream about you in 2-5 business days.
Malasaña | Hudson, NY| Cargo Collective | Portland, ME | 2021