Flight

Hussain Ahmed
| poetry

 

the day an airplane crashed,

the air became heavy

with the aura of mouths

sore with grieving songs.

I was taught to plead with the fire in my broken tongue

as would an owl, tired of nocturne.

the confession room is a block away

from freedom park, where we go to celebrate everyone

that died in flight,

everyone who had a name

similar to ours.

I felt all our dead reincarnated in me today,

my body is now soundproof; I do not hear the songs that slip out of my mouth.

Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. His poems are featured or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Mississippi.

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