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2021 Wilbur Gaffney Poetry Prize

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Paradise 

by Saddiq Dzukogi

 

To extract the poison, my father scratched a little  wound below my ankle  where the scorpion had stung, placed a black stone  against my blood  and as metal to a magnet, it fastened. It fell off my skin after draining the spite from my vein.  My mother was writing du’a on a wooden tablet.  When she was done, with zamzam  she washed the transcribed prayer  into a bowl.  I gulped the words of God as she observed them break my fever.  The wet towel she placed on my forehead  was the feeling of rubbing around a half-healed bruise.  I remember the pain, it felt like the entire malice of the world  was cuddled into the scorpion’s venom bulb,  then unloaded into my body  through its stinger. I stared at my father,  sleep blurring his face.  He whispered,  prayer is a medicine you sometimes take without swallowing.  His voice,  a faint shadow that followed me into my eyes  as they shut down. 



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