Inconvenient beauty
Olive moss clothes a cottage.
Here, I don’t squash the moth or swat the wasp.
I grip a paper cloth, a glass cup, pick them up
like a stunning butterfly or summer nasturtium.
Set them free at the window watch as they pursue sunset,
even nettles know my softness. I ask bramble for consent
to be plucked from sweet grass. I giggle at God’s imagination
When I spot the rat the size of a gentle man in the garden.
How I too, am only a half idea turned flesh. Afraid
like the ladybird of being crushed under a strange foot –
for my inconvenient beauty.
P.A.Bitez or Princess Arinola Adegbite is a poet, musician, voiceover artist, and filmmaker from Manchester. She is a winner of Slambassadors, BBC Words First 2020, One Mic Stand 2021, Common Word Going Digital, and Manchester Young Creative of The Year 2021. She is a Young Identity member. Bitez received a Castlefield Gallery Associates prize for her film Drapetomania and was commissioned by Selfridges, BBC, and the University of Cambridge. She’s been longlisted for the AUB International 2022 Poetry Prize.
Modron Magazine 