The Handshake Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Was it a handshake
before dusk grew crooked lines
across a sky of expectation

or a snake from a palm line
after clasped hands
with close stitches and glue?

Was it a bond of two palms
planted into each other
to grow thorns from two bow arms?

The two devouring hands
bonded with back tacks
and blanket stitches,

a curling river stretching
into a flowering
past, a billboard reading:

(ii)

"We were born in the same cradle
under the same stars
flying with starlings over a mat
of blue sea shooting
waves to the folded end of the world."

Was it a crocodile's back
scrubbing an alligator's hilly back
when the handshake
was tied with fibers of nimbus
in Neptune's eclipse's drop?

(iii)

Flowers grew from mulched smiles.
Petals dropped off giggles,
anthers crawling on waxy cheeks.

The living room swelled
into a dawn-ignited sky, as the two men
parted into dark jungles
carrying thorny crowns of night.