Faj'r
By Abunic Sherif II
this morning, i find my mouth echoing the Muazzin's call. it's Faj'r,
and i'm pretending to pray again. i want to turn this body into
something holy—a mosque,
leaving everything unclean at the door.
this is my first prayer:
Dear God, feel my pain in your bones...
& i will bismillah my tongue into submission. my mother will spit the anointing oil back to the Earth,
sew the hijab to her skull
& pull out the fires from her daughter's throat.
Ya Allah.. Ya Allah.. i don't know if you hear me. it's Faj'r,
and i am filled with so much silence. i prostrate myself back into my body and start a prayer.
Bismillah
Eve
for Ma-Hawa (1999-2001)
i've lost the images of your face to time. you're twenty years old.
memory,
a single photograph on grandmother's dresser.
the old women who washed you are dead too.
there is this anger death speaks to us with. plucking us like grey hairs from a scalp.
father's radio belches your voice like static. every day,
i wish your sickness had eaten my insides instead,
& mother's womb becomes a portal that transports you
to this land of breathing.
Eve. i eat apples to your memory.
i've lost the images of your face to time. you're twenty years old.
memory,
a single photograph on grandmother's dresser.
the old women who washed you are dead too.
there is this anger death speaks to us with. plucking us like grey hairs from a scalp.
father's radio belches your voice like static. every day,
i wish your sickness had eaten my insides instead,
& mother's womb becomes a portal that transports you
to this land of breathing.
Eve. i eat apples to your memory.
Amen, as a start for a prayer and other things
i don't know how to explain the thing in my blood.
this is my truth: i am morphing
into a ghost dressed in Anemia.
take this frail body, oh Lord, & turn it back into clay.
i want to see this death at the beginning. how a breath blasts
itself into nothing. how a body snaps itself back into pain,
like twigs. i am a metaphor for dying. i put this miracle second
only to God's son.
to make my body hold this much sadness, i say my mother's
prayers from the end. i start with an Amen.
BIO:
Abunic Sherif II was a young Liberian writer and poet. His works appeared in Praxis Magazine, Eboquills, Ngiga Review, Arts Lounge, The Shallow Tales Review, The Ducor Review, and elsewhere. He was the author of Al-fatiha.
