Surah
the falling paper flower
the plastic tree branch
the plight of reminiscing
the bureaucracy of kismet
the factories empty of logic
the bins to hold what’s done
the spaceship of butterflies
the video game of intimacy
the series premiere of strife
the discretion of the cosmos
the sharp wisdom of the young
O friend who reads in a cave w/o light
the comb detangling the scars
forward is not so far away
Copyright © 2021 by Tarfia Faizullah. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 27, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I decline to explain or contextualize this poem. If you, reader, get something from it—that’s all that matters.”
—Tarfia Faizullah
Tarfia Faizullah
Tarfia Faizullah was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Bangladeshi parents and raised in Texas.
Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018) and Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). Her work was anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo.