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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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