All posts tagged: Poetry

Occupied Alphabet

Published by

I.I use google translate to convey English phrases in Arabic sometimesA client tells me she is depressedAnd her father has been having tremors since the war startedBut usually when he is doing typically stressful things like dealing with an angry customer orFixing that damn light in the bathroom that won’t stop flickering even though the bulb is for sure new I type in the word “somatic” to try and figure out how to explain the correlation between the brain and the bodyAnd my insides laugh mockinglyUsing english to explain the destruction that the they third person pronoun have caused I think we got the order wrong in grad schoolThe disease cannot also be the medicine My people do not understand healing as a clinical hourThis lexicon of pain is not a researched and deliberately punctuated abstract,it is a slangAnd its letters are clear on the back of my grandma’s hands who birthed nine babies and buried some tooand knew to sweep the floors when it got too much and knew to pet the cat when …

Masnavi of Rumi

Published by

Wealth has no permanence: it comes in the morning,and at night it is scattered to the winds.Physical beauty too has no importance,for a rosy face is made pale by the scratch of a single thorn.Noble birth also is of small account,for many become fools of money and horses. Reference: Mathnawi VI: 255-260 in Camille and Kabir Helminski“Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance”Threshold Books, 1996

Nature is the First Witness

Published by

Crescendos hum, the Nile snarls against new banks, the Hornbill’s beak opens skyward sinking in uliginous ground, brown coconuts refuse to crack open, the Atlantic will not carry blue ships. Vying toddler’s smile suddenly droops to his shoulders. A newly developed embryo wishes to degrow. Accra’s night air crystallises upon an inconsequential second. And the silence. The silence of The Book quietly observes these sighing eulogies. These magnificent sighing eulogies of a clamouring natural kind.

Better times

Published by

What will you say when the clouds break to show you a sun you’ve been seeking in yourself What will you say when the better time finally arrives cool, collected, a light seeping through white teeth What will you say when tired wrists will weigh heavy with the bracelets of Kisra when the life you used to mourn will become the coolness of your eyes when the secrets of the heart will dance- collide to make a heart well lived- a life well lived. K.Y. Djassi is a poet and writer based in the UK.

Childhood

Published by

I am nostalgic for the future. Those days of hushed murmurings in Wolof and the razor sharp innocence I wish to find again tomorrow. I feel I am without roots, circumventing a shadow that has for so long been my bed. Waking up to dreams has for too long been a reality. These are the days where the people we have made home in depart one by one, taking parts of ourselves with them. These are the days where the aged who have the most rights to life here must leave. Yes. Such are the inner recesses of my mind. All types of weeds grow here and all manner of indigenous flora must be pruned. One day I may let the green coiling fingers reach and reach until verdant leaves surround my thoughts. Until the sun rises again and the dappled light of childhood resurfaces and pours out of my head. Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu is a poet and writer based in London. She is author of the chapbook “All The Birds Were Invited To A Feast In …

k.eltinaé, borders and butterflies

Published by

k.eltinaé is a Sudanese writer of Nubian descent and a third culture kid who with his poetry collection, negotiates borders and ideas as adroitly and beautifully as the argonaut that is the butterfly.  Vacillating between love and longing, displacement and arrival in his profound collection titled ‘the moral judgement of butterflies’ k.eltinaé’s body of work is at once arresting and searing, spiritual and heart wrenching. As my copy of his collection arrives, I eagerly open the pages to mine the words which have captured the startling rage, love and poetic musings of a writer who from culture to migration, war to peace has a lot to say about and to the world. – ‘nefsi’ I am upon the first reading drawn to read and re-read the poem ‘nefsi’ (translated from Arabic to mean ‘my soul’, ‘my own self’). For those that are on their own journey to self love / acceptance / those who are battling the troughs of their own minds and seeking words of affirmation which are just as impactful as West Indian …

The Railroads Know

Published by

When time stopped I still carried the hope of moving with eyelids too tired to carry new baggage when I finally sleep in an attempt to shut out all that’s new or reset this body I wake up to an old day an old year and I am glued to bed not sure if inertia is a lack of direction or waiting to be saved. Not sure what it means to remain still when it feels like there’s nothing that remains. the railroads keep track of all you’ve lost on the waythat one time you carried the sorrow of an entire village but forgot to pack your feetor the time you emptied the cupboardshaboba always said you can never use what you display the railroads keep track of all you’ve traded on the wayremember the acceleration of your dreams picking up speed of legs racing oneanother and a child between your feet believing you’re a motorcyclehow do you break the cycle if all you do is jump tracks? the railroads listen and talk back but …

Express Shipping

Published by

“no one puts their children in a boatunless the water is safer than the land” after Warsan Shire somewhere between the north and south polethere’s a boundary between a calendar dayand the next–if crossed right may cross outthe ink of yesterday and maybe evenfor a moment I will cease to exist briefly I used to think to express isto exorcise until I emptied my tank tryingto drive [..] out of my system, or is itto filter, a memory as selective as a cataloguesort: emotion low to high somewhere between my navel and diaphragmstands a piece of string, stuck but plays the saddestlullabies to keep me from sleeping or forgettinghe says all of the things I have not healed frombecome my muses and I stand at the border not knowing which is which–see there’s thisline between my navel and diaphragm that onlyI can see but it darkens, becomes more visibleselect: next day delivery somewhere between […..] and [….]I lost myself–no one ever tells you how tocalculate or declare your value, whereto collect the pieces or replacewhat …

Gills

Published by

                                 Fish with brown flesh,  collapsed scales,             strong                     hearts. Strange are those creatures that sink to t h e b o t t o m.      Choking in the seas       choking in the land. Coughing up        coral coughing up stars. “Why did they not tell us pre-life was better than life?”               And who is the murderer really?   The one who                    unwrites humanity or the             one who reads it? Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu is a poet and writer based in London. She is author of the chapbook “All The Birds Were Invited To A Feast In The Sky” published with Lote Tree Press and has been featured in the publications The Drinking Gourd, The Black Explorer, Amaliah, Islam Channel, Alchemiya and Hikaayat. She has also had her writing showcased at an M Fest exhibit in London.

Azza mocks me for praying in onesies

Published by

Azza exchanges the robes of freedomfor the silky toabs of comfort, swearsgossip travels farther than hadeethever could. no matter how many timesthey burn down cities to ashes tofuel islamophobia, the bond does not break.no matter how many times we offer ourchildren to the fire, the flames remain insatiable.our love letter to god never has any return address. deep in sujood, I am one with the earthalways returning to Allah, but never arrivingAzza swears customs are stronger thanbeliefs, no matter how many times I triedto split the two, the bond remained covalent.I am but a subatomic particlealways splitting, always dividing When fire broke out in Mecca, the Mutawaatraded his whip for a pair of binocularsthe school girls of 31 had no names, justlike all women the Arab boy donates twoRiyals for kiswa and feel entitled toclothe all women I wear Azza’s umbilical cord aroundmy waist, belt in all the dreams I lost in the firesometimes I am a small apartment city girlother times I fall from my island hammockto the countryside’s bungalow. Azza continues to burn …