A Brunch's Battlefront Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In the misty
hanging cloud
of afternoon
in my room,

I'm awaken
by crickets
and birds
in the house's
west wing.

And jumpy
sore-throated
jamming frogs,

broken flutes
in their
choked mouths.

Another world
of squeaks
and snarls
swells into rumbles

from the house's
large mouth
of growling leopards.

But I see no
animals running
or jumping
around the garden.

I see no big
bird strolling
or floating
or trudging through

in the drifting
verandah.

(ii)

I hear a dog's
bark, breaking
the glassy
air into chards

that nibble
me off, as turn
round in bed
clawed
and scratched

and bruised
by the canines
and molars

of that bark still
lodged
in my spine

splitting me
into pieces of me,
as I carry
night's soot

and the clouds
of a roar
that devoured me

and spat me out
with a whirr
into a buzzing gnat.

(iii)

The morning
unlocks
and slams ajar
its full door,

as squeaks
and snarls
shoot up

from rattling,
squeaking
silverware,

chairs dragged
about
on vanished
marbled floor in roars
and growls

from an interwoven
thick jungle
of dining space,

children at table
on the battlefront
of a gaudy brunch,

forks and knives
weapons cruising
for the kill.