What Elephants Remember fresh*

[Philatone]

billy suggested making a clean post for the poem I refuse to let die. apologies for the space/possible confusion this is bringing with it

original post is here
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V. 6 (ancestors from penguin)


Under the matriarch
who ate their ancestors,
stalks of elephant grass bow

as her march to water
ends in dust. They will take
her tusks to unravel

the ivory. Her skin will strip
into bands of sunset.
Her trunk will open

like a boabab
scoured for its dripping heart.
And she, picking at petals

of death, will only feel
its flower bloom in her eyes
as it holds her head

and releases seeds, heavier
than the memories lifted by wind
already forgotten.





v: 5 (thanks to addy, universal)



What Elephants Remember


Months of sunlight
open envelopes of memory,
the old march to water

with softer brush for mother's
broken teeth, years before her ivory
fell to dust like slabs of marble.

Those tusks,
chiseled from a nimbus
of elephant leather,

never left.
They embraced the tall stalks
that fed her when the fields dried,

soothed her hollow gums;
held her head
when death refused.

Those white knives
who carved baobab trunks
with names for thirst

sat beneath a spread
of elephant grass,
blades too thin to hide

curls of tooth,
casts of bone,
cycles of memory:

how it hurts
to forget in waves of manna
and remember in drought.







version4:


Months of sunlight
open envelopes of memory,
the march to ponds

with softer brush for mother's
broken teeth, years before her ivory
fell to dust like slabs of marble.

Those tusks,
chiseled from a nimbus
of elephant leather,

never left.
They embrace the tall stalks
that fed her when the fields dried,

soothed her hollow gums;
held her head
when death refused.

Those white knives
who carved baobab trunks
with names for thirst

won't stop hiding
in every spread of elephant grass
too thin to shroud

curls of tooth,
bone, how it hurts
to remember and forget.