THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.
My uncle gulping down
shots of whiskey neat
growls how we need more wars.
My cousin agrees,
while I see in a distance,
homes lit up, one moment,
in flames, the next,
generations of men and women
charred, their skins, marrows, hopes
up in smokes,
wreaths in a sky
that is still everyone's.
The room falls quiet,
redolent of the hours
after a massacre, a stench
of rotten fruits in the kitchen
where a spread is being cooked
for the goddess has returned from a battle.
At the dinner table,
we don't lift our heads,
but instead stare
at our plates as if the food
would rearranfe itself into atlases
guiding us to each other.
My mother lifts her glass
to the sky, and for the nth time,
we let an empty prayer of words
we never use otherwise
infiltrate the frontlines
of silence between us.
There are wars brewing, they say,
and in every newspaper we read,
we look for footprints muddy
on the porch so that
they can be cleaned
before the whole house gets dirty.
But these heavy trails
are carried on shoulders of the air,
stuffing our lungs like cigarrette smoke.
And only when short of breath,
we start looking for peace like lost keys
to a room which like my uncle's heart
remains bolted from inside.