after Sylvia Plath
The rusty blood of brown blades
Set your body to rest like bean seed
In dry soil — decay.
My small palms lay 5 inches too small
To hold your shoulders and the soft-
Cracked air the night flushes in.
An ode starts beside my lungs, magnifying
The beginning of a requiem A new body
That stared too much into Medusa’s eyes
Has come to rest, stone strong. Your silence,
A silhouette of our suffering casts its beauty
Fluorescent bulb staring tiredly at the open
Glow of the room shuts into darkness.
You’re no more my father than the broken
Lyric of sad poems inject glory into a river’s
Mouth to reflect gory memories.
All hail your breathlessness, how unpleasant
It makes me feel. I push my large ear into the
[supposedly] contracting corner of your chest
And the sound of objects put to rest fills my ear.
Realization, matter how cruel, strikes my head
With a baton the size of a maize stalk. My eyes
Shut roughly like small belts on wide waists
The night shuts softly like quiet.
The music Starts slowly
In time for the loss. The way kullu nafsin
Attaches itself to the lip Of za’ikatul maut.
Abdulrazaq Salihu TPC I is a Poet and member of the hilltop creative arts foundation. He has works published/forthcoming in Bracken, Eunoia review, Poetry column, poetry archive, poetry quarterly, Jupiter review, masks lit mag, and others. He won the 2022 masks lit mag poetry award, the Nigerian prize for teen authors, splendors of Dawn poetry contest and a suite of other prizes. He tweets @Arazaqsalihu and on instagram: Abdulrazaq._salihu