Purple Shadows
Dark flecks of a dry year erupt
on the moon’s radiant face,
there is no death of memory
that hasn’t been conceived
by various rotations of a black
rimmed sun
in a cosmos where your myths exhort
supremacy around shimmering bodies
of water that glides in the sky,
I created light in that part of reality
and pushed the dagger of your heart
deep into my body so it became
locked, the stars cast a dark
to where my shadow stood, my mouth
compressed like a key
jammed in thin metal lips
of an opening not its fit,
and my voice sank in its lake
of still white walls,
prayers that were no more a beam –
dank brown meadows
of desire growing as pale
purple tulips –
Wrought Streets
(after Oscar Wilde)
It’s a frozen road: the colour of the light on my cell’s screen. Between the cleaves that have formed on my walls from perpetual nights of drenching in seep water from top floors, my house still stands like the last leaf of an autumn’s wind shuddered rage. There is you being wanting, there is me being evasive. I have lost count of all the stars I watched fall to find Narcissus’s pond. But there is you promising, and then there is me speculating. Wrought my streets with the greenest dreams, the lanterns will still be cluttered by moths. This isn’t a new story: these aren’t new words: now isn’t tomorrow. There is you with reasoning, here is me squirming. Why can’t this be easy? Why can’t you be a grownup and disappear?
***
Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her work appears in over 80 literary venues both online and print, along with several anthologies by different presses, the history of which can be accessed on her blog sheikha82.wordpress.com. She has edited and co-edited two separate anthologies released by Poets, Artists Unplugged , and has had her poetry recited at two separate reading events in Greece. She edits poetry for eFiction India.
*Header photo courtesy of contributor C. C. O’Hanlon*
*Flower photo courtesy of Brian Michael Barbeito*
Bough
(after Oscar Wilde)
This sight has condensed like the summer frost on a poor man’s windowpane. In my story Wilde’s prince would give the gem to his swallow – be selfish, unstirred and immersed in the poetic ghastliness of her leaden face. I am no wise: I see forests as a waste. On one of the boughs there where the forest burnt blaze hilts over the highest cloud, the sky seared its skin off in brackish chunks. It was right out of the story books: the stars clumped in lustful pain and the ice of the winter moon fell like cragged shards of a broken crown. I am the god of my sky. I will de-statue you after sculpting your form by the rights of my vision. There will be no aftermath, no battle, no glory. It will end in a happy place – a garden in Eden, your soul embalmed and held on a pedestal for me to admire at whim.
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