Untitled

S.J. Ghaus

after Intersections, by Anila Qauyyum Agha

Ya Allah,
When, at last, I walk through your house,
             I will change it.
Break the windows
Defeat the kitchen, where you’ve spent hours
devising with dust. I will walk 
                                                                    barefoot
into your shadows
                and stir them up, like a river. Like the water
I’ll pour
from my hands onto your green floors, now 
                                    glistening with glass dew
and sabaah. I’ll kick the quilts
into a pile
                 and throw your cushions at the doors,
which I will unhinge. Is it even your house,
    in the end? We are sitting
after all, in the residues of my life. All the motes of it
making a noise, blue-black
as a summer cicada. My dead skin
can’t help but muddy your world. The walls 
of which are infinite and cut
                                     with precision. This cannot be 
a museum. Dear collaborator,
I mean to say,
    you invited me in — my brain
and bone and beating
heart. While you shine in the center
    like a constant star,
 I toss my orbit. Offer my shadow
    and moonlight. Pull
at the clean carpets until
         they are marked
with a thousand flighty circles. I don’t belong
        here. I do. I will be 
a free
and roving atom 
        in this careful space. I will
be raucous and touch
everything with my love. At the end,
     after the last salaam has been whispered
over my shoulder, I will not
     be sorry for what mess 
I made here.     I will be joy
    — and you, too.

Prayer for the dark

S.J. Ghaus

       Prayer for the enormous night
       that brought us here
the nightmares galloping
       their hundred horses
through our sleep-ghost selves,
       prayer for that simple sound
of wept and weeping. Prayer
       for escape by water, air

          by foot        the deep motor
                           of living and the black
                   grease running our bodies
          to the earth. Prayer
       for the small black marbles
       rolling     in our throats.
For the suffocating

       dark. For hiding. Prayer for my child
in our cabinet. Prayer for counting
       to ten, prayer for the ready, prayer
for the not. Prayer for black 
       ink and fine twining print.

          For the history of forests written
          on decomposing  logs, their signature
          of dense shadow urging forth
                              our agreements
                      to wipe each other’s brows, to lay
                              one worn hand
                    on another, to cross a thunder-swept
                           sea on a single horse
                           who cannot swim
          Prayer for fear knotting
          our hearts tighter together touching
       each other the infinitesimal dark
          between our bodies, prayer
       for that dark we swing through
           in the dead
of time        prayer for we
may mark it
may it mark us with its burning soot

S.J. GHAUS is a Pakistani-American poet, gardener, and community organizer currently working on an MFA at Indiana University. A VONA/Voices of Our Nation Fellow, they are the recipient of the 2020 Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Award and their work can be found on poets.org.

Originally published March 2021 in poiesis 2.1 by w the trees.