The moon’s not yet quite there, and the buildings are hideous,
at most a woman on the corner, or a student lost in sartre and making the world’s riddles
By the time their sons learn the meaning of sunset,
only father’s hands remain,
and the plow and the field.
Today I raked a melody
with syllables culled from your lips.
But I miss you when you gather
chrysanthemums each morning;
On the eight hour lorry ride from El Fashir to Nyala, perched
on potato sacks, I am stripped of the constant bickering
He can feel them
turning lazy cartwheels,
digging holes their exact diameter into his thoughts.
While hiking in the wild
I picked it up on the trail
Hard like a diamond
Sleek like a mirror
Spent his life hunched over, carving
symbols with a bleeding hand.
Every night the same dream – an open sky
and a doorway with no key.
Shed of weight, it weeps gently,
the air suffused with fermenting sweetness.
Cut further along its flanks, following its contour, in diagonal cuts
blinding its many eyes, one by one.
Dawn is still far away,
beyond the wire-meshed fence
in another country,
another world.