ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Inside the Flower Room, selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Poetry Society of America, Oxford Review of Books, Gulf Coast, African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. He has won fellowships from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ebedi International Writers Residency.
Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry:
What The Poem Said
Waterlog
When mother whispered what doesn’t kill you —
I replied; turns me into a living corpse.
I am the spitting image of my shadow,
a face absorbed into a night, aching
of what has been ripped off. I am fluent
in my silence. What transpires after stars collapse —
what happens if the dead just turns into trees
corralled into the passage of time, blathering
about its inadequacy to erase existence,
the agony is a silent war in my body, each time
I open my mouth to speak, inhaling more pain
that jam packs my lungs like a riot ground.
Come into my foxhole with the eyes that see
what others can’t. let’s shadow each other,
I will collect the light that leaked into the parching
river. My eyes are a window waterlogged
with tears. I cannot see anything
other than what frightens me. I am living
off my fear. How do I consent to joy? If it’s a currency
what can it buy? All I want is to crawl
away from a house built in perpetuity for grief,
with corners, spidered with longing, pain,
and tears in jarringly equal proportions. My tongue inside
a keyhole cannot unlock the door,
Consider my grief as a stripping serpent,
usually it means a river turns poisonous
when I drink from it.
When I lost my daughter, a lot of people in their bid to comfort me, including my mother, would say all sorts of things that didn't make sense. And despite this coming from a place of care, I wanted only their silence. This poem captures a moment when silence has more value than words.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
