Poem of the Day
1981
By Asiya Wadud
in a world the orange sun resets
in a world the orange sun resets
While watching
a movie
with a lovely, unyielding,
Suddenly fatigued among French
women in the roman
“Look, my legs,” you point after lying on the rocks.
By your toes, water is light yellow
like the most beautiful mouth wash.
In the other world
You’re holding a bubble in your hands
It reflects everything as it grows
Where maid and eunuch whisper ‘love and death’,
While Hawk and Eagle grouse and peck and lurch,
Two parakeets upon a single perch.
The children have packed up the light
And gone home for the bedtime story
In which Jack wakes the Sleeping Fury.
Liberal, blue-eyed, shivering, trying not
to look like a bill
collector or detective,
I used to pretend I stumbled into the place
casually, after a long day shopping or
I'd pretend I was a drunk
I lived in the poor part of town
where the hookers hung out on the street corners at night,
and sometimes,
Winter is thick as rock
In the quarry of icy season
And snow squeals underfoot: