in Tuam,
County. Galway ///

cradled in the mother //// rotating body of bog forest // my tongue /// sleeping against the moss, infantile spirations cause soil to separate from the ground. /// the dead language /// without ogives or industry /// without simulacra //// without cobalt-mined /// shit constantly in your hands

The Home /// where my sixteen year old woman mothered me //// and called me sin //// and cried /// over and into my eyelids //// the hysteria-drenched //// morning sun in the comatose white /// hallway and /// my /// throat was //// compressed until
no more did I weep /// guímis suaimhneas síoraí dá hanam

my head is so swollen /// it reaches across seas //// sunset eyes anterior fontanelle outstretches towards trees that veer into the claustral blackness of atmosphere that // decays space and time. // the decaying scents /// of nighttime and fall and of //// the skin that hangs, /// eviscerated and grey /// mangled with the twine on the ground ////
I see
prenatal //// imagery //// of children /// parts collected ///
in plastic bags //// I see them ////// and cannot hold them. /// /// the same bags that //// asphyxiate the throats of birds and fishes /// and now are //// buried in ground //
that will soon be burned and
sometimes there is smoke /// riding out from the library //// or sometimes then /// the library is gone /// jahannam
sometimes there are children ///// being buried where the mosque once /// was /// sometimes they aren’t because their earth //// cannot hold so much grief //// sometimes instead of infants they are // animals /// or terrorists ///
in the country where all the women are fourteen year old girls who sometimes mother /// their human animal offpsring or livestock
mostly they are just numbers /// sometimes they have a story /// a face //// a love /// a family, ////

that once /// dwelled among the household foliage, to forage //// for a crib of dried anemones, chrysanthemums on the table ///// an infant whimper in the corner of the eye - sounds full-bodied and wet /// as the buzuk strings like
his spirations / lingering / leaving icy traces in the cold air,

/// from dawn to sunset in supplication ///

a cylindrical basin of water once was placed on a kitchen counter, kaleidoscopes of tiles/// constructed /// by the family next door, or down the street where the mosque once stood, /// and the children would run /// out the door to their schools /// that don’t exist anymore, /// the family //// that doesn’t exist anymore and might as well,

have never existed ////

no soul may die /// without permission first, /// akhira

sometimes I’m still here, // a prenatal warmth encloses me, /// the amniotic suffocation /// of oxygen deprivation, /// sometimes a wild cat licks me //// She talks too //// and tells me, //// about
about the body that never sleeps, /// in modernity ///
always awake and /// paws scrape across
the fertile ground, //// sometimes she tells me about, ///
passivity and irony, the loss of ///// religion in society //// and maybe modern medicine /// she thinks how the sacrality of human life, /// is no longer is a concept that exists, ///
every death, /// should awake us, every life //// should rejuvenate us /// her body is disfigured and a car tire is imprinted on her abdomen, //
yet instead our circadian rhythms are internally ruptured //// she kneads her body against me because I am her mother /////// she tells me about, the lifespan //// of stars and /// the transience inherent in the universal laws /// that are visible /// in the malachite of her
eyes ///

she speaks of the /// Dhammapada /// of nirodha //
of the sounds of extinct /// machines and of /// extinct /// species, the cries of //// the baiji river dolphin song
warning of an endangered people /// and an endangered land

but she’s / just //// a dead cat

/// deprived of oxygen and /// ‘Nirodha - ridden’ she says
the food that my dad /// once left for her still

in her bowl, /// perpetuity

jhaynewe

jhaynewe

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jhaynewe

jhaynewe

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