Catalogue of Bones

With all this space inside me,

I know I am not just human

but perhaps sky—

my spine feels like a ladder

of smoke leaning against clouds.

Maybe I am a sector of sea,

offer me a hug and risk drowning.

A museum of bones is also possible,

or art or autopsy, regardless—I am 

a heavy emptiness.

You see, when that man came 

inside me without asking, 

that’s when I knew I had no doors,

I am neither museum nor morgue

but an unfenced churchyard;

a field of feigned bone trees.

I am tilled topsoil and torn

earthworms, dirt and dirge.

I am what is left behind:

fat maggots and flies,

the wide open after-silence,

scent and hardening cement,

epitaph and headstones.

I am the catalogue of drying bones.

Topher Allen is a poet from Jamaica. His work explores grief, mental wellness, and many aspects of his Caribbean upbringing. He is an Obsidian Foundation Fellow whose work appears in Montreal Writes, Magma, adda, Poetry London, Barzakh and elsewhere. Allen won the 2019 Louise Bennett-Coverley Poetry Prize and was a 2024 Markus D Manley Award finalist.