ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Sanna Wani is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto studying Religion and Astrophysics. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Paperbark Magazine, and Manifest Station. She is Editor-in-Chief at Acta Victoriana and the 2017 winner of the Norma Epstein award. She is usually thinking about birds, flowers or trees.
Also by Sanna Wani:
a mean mean of a medium mode
ricochet. & relax and eat.
Poets Resist
Edited by Krista Cox
July 19, 2018
Edited by Krista Cox
July 19, 2018
Asifa
I want to knock on the door of the temple where they trapped you. I want to knock and knock again and have no one answer the door. I want to stand there until my knuckles are swollen. Until my hands fall off. I want to call this penance.
I have dreams of you that will not leave me. I imagine a purple shirt with yellow flowers — two pigtails — and I wake up in a cold sweat. I have a niece your age. I have four walking hearts. Two eyes. I cannot look at the pictures they have left of you.
There are so many mountains in this place. It is not enough. There is land enough to bury a thousand men and still. It is not enough. What happened to you happened here.
I keep reading stories. Old memoirs or rumors. Neatly written articles. I take a hammer to the books, the papers, the strewn words. I don’t know the difference between what I believe and what I don’t want to know.
I dream I cut eight men down. I split them in half with my bare hands. I don’t see their faces or learn their names but I am pleased. I shake their dirty blood off my wrists and spit it out their bones. I call this a tree festival. I know we are all Muslim here, but, in those dreams, I am a deranged and beautiful god.
I dig a small grave for you, mark it in the northwest corner of the province. I don’t know where the real one is. What remained of you was small, small already because you were. I don’t think I deserve to visit your grave. I don’t think anyone does and I hate myself for this. Pontification has no place in tragedy.
I leave two halves of a lily in the dugout. I could set this entire valley on fire and it would not be enough. I watch a falcon scream in the sky and I know there is no way to go to sleep.
The following poem was written in reaction to the horrifying news of Asifa Bano’s murder in Kashmir (severe content warnings for: murder, rape, pedophilia, violence).
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
