The mosque at dusk was close to Forster’s,
except, we did not have the moon,
or the species of feet, soot-slabbed,
curled like the dagger behind the glass case
that I alerted you to,
but you watched the oriental kettle,
knowing it not to pop, it was how we
were reflected on its set curve that made you think
of Akbar and a dreamt-up prophet,
the massacre of frangipanis
as we walked the mosque’s outskirts.
“Frangi who?” you ask.
I tell you it’s the flower of death.
The flower that reposes
with words shut into the old.
The ornaments came to you the most,
every item had its place pleated on your
frame and upon your ribs,
the bucket handle, the worded kitab
like trimmed grass, prickly soft,
like the gown that I will wear
upon your affirmation,
“yes, the hieroglyphic came
apart in my last thought,
I will see you in velvet
and your hair will be knotted
into mine”.
Yet the vellum goes the great way,
across fish ranging the hot soups of these
waters and the quiet lulls of those nearer
to the way my nipple cracks when it faces
the blue of twilight.
Who can say that the time is coming, has come, or is here?
The call to prayer sits on our tone,
we can hear it from our single zones,
you are marking your way through the skyline,
but you are never closer to the betelnut boxes
hidden for child’s play throughout the region
of the mosque that we found one day
when we tried at being a little like the rest.
This piece was featured in “Construction” magazine here.