A Flock of Birds by Saddiq Dzukogi

A Flock of Birds
Saddiq Dzukogi

I want to force birds against the sky of my mouth.
           Beating their wings toward that infinity of songs.

It’s time for a seed to hold up its eyes to a sun,
           bathing in its last lights. The world would like to spin,

a little faster now. It is not up to me
           to bring the proof of a ghost’s inner longing. My skin is stiff

says the chiropractor, rubbing his hands around my body,
           my bones—how they speak so clearly to him.

The mark of salah on my forehead turns into a flock
           of birds. I am leaving the prairie for the South, where

ancestors were immobile under the toil of cotton. Tears
           irrigate my anguish until anguish opens like a seedpod,

and there is only fragrance. In the dark,
           my eyes are my stars. In the thin voice of a song,

I ask what is the aftermath of bliss? A divination
           piled on the dim uncertainty of my own life.

Is it not chaos?
           The soil, overfed with the tacky molasses of grief, is dying.

And I am a ghost of my own wants, afflicted with desire to live longer
           than my dreams. I still cart around the traumas of a body

long gone. In my sockets I carry the eclipsed eyes of the moon,
           hoping the past is wedged between its margins.