The Dance of the Lambs and the Birds
Green, and green, and suddenly
a light trapped in a soft shell.
Above the city of Jericho,
the chickens are coming home
to roost. I rewrite history
and keep the apple where no hand
can reach it. Sinai because
your breath is fear. Pisgah
because your touch is hurt.
I am scared of all that I am
capable of. To break a body
is to know it
for what it truly is. You say this
is love, so I surrender my wants
at your feet. To know a body
is to break it wide open, and I have grown
to love everything about nothing.
Out in the wilderness,
the guard dog is eating a thunderstorm
and the night’s skin is an eye
sore. Damn the consequences.
I trace the lone graph of my body
and study its careful intricacies. Then,
like you, I lift the nothingness of me
above my head and tip it over
the blade of rocks. I do not want to bury anything
I do not want to bury.
Copyright © 2025 by Ameen Animashaun. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 30, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I have been drawn recently to rebellion and violence, and all the junctures where they meet in history, mythology, and the self. Again and again, we return to Adam and Iblīs, the apple, Musa, Jesus, all the reckonings they carry. Like almost anything, we return to interrogate the self. The persona in this poem resists the authority of the father and questions the very idea of ownership; of inheritance, the body, even of the self. Writing through these myths of defiance has given me a sharper sense of how violence and rebellion shape not just history but identity, the self.”
—Ameen Animashaun
Ameen Animashaun
