Two Poems by Ayesha Asad
Prayer of the City
yesterday I asked the sun
what she was grateful for & she said
the blue of the earth & the stars that dance
around her & the way she spins
in happy circles I dream the afternoon
is hog-tied like a mockingbird,
wings fractured, waiting for sundown
to release it in the same prayer
that shudders in the lungs
of a dying man & I sit where the leaves
grow in patches like the hair
on my father’s head & I think of the way
the mockingbird cradled grains
in her beak to feed her injured lover
I wonder what makes the sky
the sky & the earth
the earth
yes, I have run over beauty
in my bone-weary gray van yes
I have patched it together, sewed it
with spools of love yes
I have written love letters
to god yes
I have asked him why the ocean
never spills over with tears yes
I have trusted yes
I have looked at the earth as a prayer,
blood soaked by dirt, dirt scattered
by wind. yesterday I frowned upon the people
who yank sunflowers off their roots
before they bloom
today I tell them peace & peace again
& peace again & let us pray together
on the same carpet & let us sing our praises
to god let god fill our bodies
with streams & let us float overhead
& spangle the sky
Linguistic Crisis
I fear this earth
is not a song. As if some preacher
swallowed a goldmine, lapped up language
& smote his lips with rain, the kind
that strikes like a bullet. Language,
like a beautified chord of spring, or the fresh spice
of an olive tree, can spike & snap, can morph into a charred
log, woodgrain flayed. A fruit with its color
peeled away. I fear language, & I fear truth.
My body stripped of skin craves warmth. & when
rivers undulate I dream music pulsing
within their bones. Oh,
to be a warm river. To be the water fairy-light
upon my preacher’s tongue, unconscious
of whom it dances for. God is great & God is merciful,
if he created this song of an earth. Whom will
I marionette for if the trees are combed
of their melody?
Ayesha Asad is from Dallas, Texas. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in PANK, Cosmonauts Avenue, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Menacing Hedge, Neologism Poetry Journal, Santa Clara Review,The Mantle, and elsewhere. Her writing has been recognized by Creative Writing Ink Journal and the Robert Bone Memorial Creative Writing Prize. She studies Literature and Biology at the University of Texas at Dallas. In her free time, she likes to dream. She was born in 2001. You can find her on Twitter & Instagram @ayes_lion.