{"id":677,"date":"2024-09-01T15:06:12","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T15:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akpatacww.com.ng\/?p=677"},"modified":"2024-09-01T15:06:12","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T15:06:12","slug":"night-song-abdulrazaq-salihu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/?p=677","title":{"rendered":"Night song &#8211; Abdulrazaq Salihu\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>after Sylvia Plath<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The rusty blood of brown blades\u00a0<br>Set your body to rest like bean seed\u00a0<br>In dry soil \u2014 decay.<br>My small palms lay\u00a0 5 inches\u00a0 too small<br>To hold your shoulders and the soft-<br>Cracked air the night flushes in.<br>An ode starts beside my lungs, magnifying\u00a0<br>The beginning of a requiem \u00a0 \u00a0 A new body<br>That stared\u00a0 too much into Medusa\u2019s eyes<br>Has come to rest, stone strong.\u00a0 Your silence,<br>A silhouette of our suffering casts its beauty\u00a0<br>Fluorescent bulb staring tiredly at the open\u00a0<br>Glow of the room shuts into darkness.<br>You\u2019re no more my father than the broken\u00a0<br>Lyric of sad poems inject glory into a river\u2019s\u00a0<br>Mouth to reflect gory memories.<br>All hail your breathlessness, how unpleasant\u00a0<br>It makes me feel. I push my large ear into the\u00a0<br>[supposedly] contracting corner of your chest\u00a0<br>And the sound of objects put to rest\u00a0 fills my ear.<br>Realization, matter how cruel, strikes my head<br>With a baton the size of a maize stalk. My eyes<br>Shut roughly like small belts on wide waists\u00a0<br>The night shuts softly like quiet.<br>The music \u00a0 \u00a0 Starts slowly\u00a0<br>In time for the loss. \u00a0 \u00a0 The way\u00a0 kullu nafsin\u00a0<br>Attaches itself to the lip \u00a0 Of za\u2019ikatul maut.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" style=\"margin-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60);margin-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60)\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Abdulrazaq Salihu\u00a0 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\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>after Sylvia Plath The rusty blood of brown blades\u00a0Set your body to rest like bean seed\u00a0In dry soil \u2014 decay.My small palms lay\u00a0 5 inches\u00a0 too smallTo hold your shoulders and the soft-Cracked air the night flushes in.An ode starts beside my lungs, magnifying\u00a0The beginning of a requiem \u00a0 \u00a0 A new bodyThat stared\u00a0 too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[46,42,9,11,37,6],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-1","category-poetry","tag-abdulrazaq-salihu","tag-contemporary-nigerian-poets","tag-nigerian-literature","tag-nigerian-poetry","tag-nigerian-literary-magazine","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}