Now Reading
“Cast Me, Cast Me Not” by Stanley P. McD

“Cast Me, Cast Me Not” by Stanley P. McD

More like how you thought you’d fix it: remove

the tumour, sew the body back up, tighten the bolts

& nuts, heal the wound―how easy you thought 

it would be to solve it, how the answer seem

conjured &, at long last, 

handed to you the way a 

mid-wife hands over the baby, only to find

that sobriety means no more than having to live

the life―the stillness of the life―of all what

restlessness could have offered, which it did, which

you do, everyday, no less than the restiveness between

the hunting & the chase―or any between

for that matter; it’s not that simple, 

so I’ve seen. 

As for the blue pill, Things that stay the same, 

the miners in the mines doing

their mining Things: take, take, take, & take, & I

being the mine from which everything is taken, flower

verse in which everything dies, starting with, for example, 

love once upon a time meaning

salvation, as in the one I

once described as the greater power who

saved & rescued & took―that’s the one; now

love meaning torn: torn out of, torn away from―the 

cruelty of the choice, the choice to reject, 

to say no to, 

to cast away a memory.


Stanley Princewill McDaniels is a Nigerian poet & 2015 Ebedi International Writers’ Residency fellow whose work have appeared or are forthcoming on Brittlepaper, African Writer, 20.35 Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, The SHORE poetry, LIBRETTO, Praxis Magazine, Bakwa Magazine, Kalahari Review, Tuck Magazine, Bombay Review, Lunaris Review, amongst others. He is a Review Correspondent for Praxis.
What's Your Reaction?
Excited
0
Happy
0
In Love
0
Not Sure
0
Silly
0
Scroll To Top