ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Abdulbaseet Yusuff is a Nigerian writer. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, MoonPark Review, Burning House Press, Kalahari Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry, and elsewhere.
Also by Abdulbaseet Yusuff:
Three Poems stars are big suns Physics Textbook Explains Why People Can’t Leave Abusive Marriages
Three Poems stars are big suns Physics Textbook Explains Why People Can’t Leave Abusive Marriages
Poets Resist
Edited by Len Lawson
August 31, 2020
Edited by Len Lawson
August 31, 2020
Pulp
For a thing to be as soft, as boneless as pulp
it must have been beaten into indifference
stripped of spine, schooled in scalding waters
until it starts to discern the cauldron as refuge
its ears must have listened to too many elegies
that they now offer the tympanum no sensation
its feet must have amassed miles of boulevards
in their cracks; its hands must have turned lead
from holding placards; its nostrils must have
acclimatized to char and the iron of blood
When the newness in news has worn off from
repetition, only the letter -s lingers — silence
Almost every part of me has been beaten to pulp
There is a part of my brain that prefixes body counts
with the adverb just
Just three dead. Just fifteen wounded.
Just. Just? But what is just about it?
Hundred or one dead, what do numbers matter?
For a thing to reach such a state, its throat must be
swollen with dead bodies & to rest easy, it
must be swallowing the bodies like shame; the stench
must have bloated its stomach, its chest deadweight.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
