All posts tagged: writer

Occupied Alphabet

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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 …

Nature is the First Witness

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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.

Under the Belly of the Sea, a Victor is Born

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Ink was my saviour I drank it by the gallon. It poured into me then engulfing all the writing that others had defined me by pages and pages surrounding my liver unwritten by gushing blackness down my throat it went strangely willing me to write my story to tell my truth. At daybreak we witness. This night we must fathom. Under the belly of the sea a victor is born. K.Y. Djassi is a poet and writer based in the UK.

Childhood

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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 …

Azza mocks me for praying in onesies

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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 …