Pelle Pelle by Olatunde Osinaike

Hard leather valid as the exchange 
between AJ & Free, solid as the grease
from the hour prior I cooked into
a charade of dark. I’ve heard love is known 
by three names though it has only 
shared one with me. I shout it from
sidewalks, sing it over stoves and
as steam settles it calls back
like a panic within but I play it
cool, leave the chunky bits in the pan.
I used to be a member of the soda 
club, that period of rhinestone 
like cameras in my eye. The knack 
of those cameras to pick up 
anything beyond the blue light.
How I’d put you on, a secret
only you and I whispered. And even if
I was talking to myself, at least it was
something real. These days,
tears don’t hit the same, don’t act 
as much like kisses of a landscape.

Originally from Chicago’s West Side, Olatunde Osinaike is the author of Tender Headed, winner of the 2022 National Poetry Series, shortlisted for the Society of Midland Authors Award and Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize, and for which he was selected as the 2024 Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry.

3 March 2025