Bouquet

by

I am a sun, rising over a field of hays
but once, I was a rose flower
blooming amidst leaves of faded greens.

For centuries, the petals held encrypted
messages, until the mouth formed enough alphabets for love.

Before there was hay, there was field.

I was once a pollen grain,
dispersed outside the window – of
the woman I would let sing in my ears,

as the rain drums the windowpanes.

The genesis to everything beautiful, is light –
or rain or both. And whatever
hints of love, hints of death.

Editor’s Note: The visual experience of the next two poems is optimal on a desktop.

Circle

There’s no vocabulary              in the army –                for grief,          or death.
Each door you exit,                              leads                                        to another parade ground.
With each lightening                on the face of the sky,              you remember
the matching tattoos                you drew                      on each other’s back.
The flash                      of repeating memories you crave                     every morning,
I hope it keeps you alive          until the next                           gun fight.
Every death is expected,          but you loam the pains             in your mouth
and sing                       of the days when the gyration was                               enough
for you             and the battalion.                                 You remember ___________,
excused from the war front,                 and like you,                he envisaged rapture

The roaring of the waters         on the edge of Lagos               reminds him of Maiduguri,
the thatch        where you both kept watch                  and sang until it stopped raining.
The ocean’s wave                     kept him alive                                      until the next gun fight.

He returned                                         before the arc on his stomach             healed.
The field is where the love is,                           he made it        to the pavilion
where you both sang                on top of your voices,              because you must not close your eyes,
not in prayers,              not to dream of anywhere                    outside the circle.

After the ambush                                                                          you still hear whispers
of his songs,                 that alone keeps you too alive              until the next gun fight.        

Reflection

There is a feather in us all,
                                 but mine often 
reroute me back home. 

The day after a flood, our room sounds emptier
                         than it was before we slept.
wondered what we lost to the brown water. 

Like the glittering lips of a knife that turns rusty
               in a pouch that is to keep it safe,
our shadows became translucent on the blue wall.

This is how I imagine the bottom of the sea,
                              but layered with stones
                or crab bones –

where an
octopus hides, waiting
for preys to wander into its territory.

Hussain Ahmed poems are featured in AGNI, Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He is the author Blue Exodus.

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