Ameen Animashaun
SONG
The world has gone mad
and I’m down
on my knees again.
To be a good son
is to be as careful
as a sentence. I can’t be
tame with my hunger.
Won’t be tamed
by the invisible hands
of our god.
Sometimes, suffering
is just suffering. The more
these hands change,
the more they remain
the same. In a house
burning cold, our god
cracked a joke
and grinded our ribs
into laughter.
You, and me, and
our bloodied mouths.
I am aware that my tongue
is a blade that cuts
everything but you.
On a long walk in the middle
of nowhere, you asked
when we’ll be something else
outside of a promise.
The problem with memory
is the same problem with grief.
This is not an accident.
The story is as long
as the memory of whoever
is telling it.
Wherever you are now,
I hope your body remembers
its history.
I hope your god has asked
for your mercy,
and I hope you have refused
to forgive him.
THERE IS NO POINT
The truth of a knife isn’t in its ability to cut;
it’s in it being pronounced a knife. What a miracle
it is to be named a thing. To be named alive,
and then a son, and then a song, and then a gun.
What a miracle it is to be named anything at all.
The story always starts in reverse because it is
more captivating that way: the woman died
and the man dropped the knife and the silence
stopped right when you least expected it to.
Memory trumps beauty the way violence
trumps memory the way the mind slips
as you walk round and round in an endless loop
of stairs. It is raining blood in that one memory
that keeps playing. A mob sings itself
into violence and at the center, a woman
in a gray floral dress and red running shoes
lay motionless. All that matters is the mismatch
of the shoes, not the violence. This is where
the light cues. This is where the voice of God says
cut
and the knife falls to do his bidding. The wind
is blowing differently now and too many things
are predictable. A preacher, a broken boy,
and a loaded gun all walked into a bar and—cut!
As usual, there is always something in the shadows
waiting to be its true self. It is night and it is snowing
and the rest of the story is waiting to write itself.
A coyote, all white, as if challenging the snow
to beat the miracle of its fur, runs madly across
the street; its mouth stained with blood.
The preacher walks out of the bar alone
and smokes the last bit of a fag. My fat cat
is missing again. On the radio, a woman
with the voice of a saint is singing:
God is watching over you now.
God is watching over you
from inside of your body.
ORDINARY EYES
When the train rattled past
The House of Grace, the songs
of the forbidden shook its rims.
The sky was electric blue; the face
of the one wild serpent I see
in my dreams.
My anger
is the anger of the pack
of wolves forced to mother
a field of sheep. How frightening
is mystery? The delicious
disobedience of it all.
The woman who sat beside me
was a god and the pale child in her
arms drank from the fire in her chest.
I bit my tongue and
made a mark. This is what you did
not know: when Judith made away
with Holofernes’ head, ten more bastards
crawled out of his neck and laid siege
to the garden of bellflowers.
It was too late then,
so I looked away. Hanging
off the coach was a banner
that said Know thyself, but I didn’t
want to remember the details.
I am learning to sit
with mystery: when the train
pulled to the station,
the woman reached for my hands
and dropped the child
knowingly in them. The body was still
warm to the touch. The eyes looked
like they could conquer the world.
WHITE BOAT
In waiting, I realized there might not be
much, out of all that there is, that matters
—but the winged fish yards away
from where I stood—obviously oblivious
of my existence—made something previously
unimaginable stir in me. Showing off, or trying to
escape something: a predator; itself; the winged fish
leaped out of the water, spread itself wide open,
glided for yards until it couldn’t no more. I snapped
out, knocked on the door in front of me. Waited.
Nothing. In time, the fish emerged again; more
frantic; its glide guided by desperation. In the corners
of my eyes, what is not present. Which might be light
playing a trick. Which might be the secret that keeps it
all together. Which, even, might be nothing. Snellius slipped
into mind, slipped out as quickly. The fish, still gliding, left
a trail of blood. I thought about my hand; thought about pain,
and how painful, when stripped bare, might mean to be full
of pain. How what I chose to see was vastly different
from what I could actually see. It’s been months now,
and the fish is still alive in my mind. The boat
that docked did not bring any painful news.
He whom I wanted on the other side of the door was still
warm when the door came crashing down.
AND FINDING, AND FINDING
From this to that, a grass-chewing
fawn hopped, not mindlessly, but
with absolutely no rhythm it could be
mistaken for mindlessness. In harmony,
leaves murmured behind,
as if acknowledging the illusion
of free will. From beyond the end
-less row of trees, the mountains
called over and over. In watching,
what, you thought, of all these is there
to miss? The fawn moaned to something
in the distance. Received no reply. Went back
to grazing. Its animalistic tendency of call
and response bursting to the surface.
The midnight sun settled, rose. When
night came again, the new friend
you’ve made remained; interrogating
the blade of grass with its hooves.
The day went by too fast. So much
of what is considered lost is still
open to interpretation.
HYPOTHESIS
Somewhere in history,
there is a tree ambushed
with birds, and under
the tree, there is a woman,
old, guiding a blind dog.
There’s motion, a stop.
The dog sniffles at the root
before raising its leg to pee
—its mind’s eye subverting
the betrayal done to his body.
There’s a storm. A spreading
disease. There’s the story
going on over and over and then
there’s me at the border of desire,
running straight into the storm.
In the field of nothingness,
I put on a raincoat to hide myself
from myself. I stretch
towards the field: the silence
falling over the blue shadow of God.
Somewhere else in history,
I wake my bad dog from a bad dream.
I take its feral head into my lap.
Its breath becoming my breath.
What will ruin him becoming
what will ruin me too.
BEYOND A STEEP HILL
Because there was nothing else
to be beyond the jagged mountains
and pine trees, I began as silence.
Began as the slender figure in a bright red
lighthouse that contained everything:
miracles, songs of those that were damned
before me, warmth—or something
so close to it in texture, they could be swapped
out for each other. Everything tangible
and otherwise—except for light. The light
-house, fenced with magnolias and fire lilies,
stood arrogantly beyond what the hand
could not reach; beyond myth and the grand
-ness of desire.
But how much of it all is real, and how much
of it is the mind playing tricks on the mechanics
of the flesh that housed it? How much of abstraction,
exactly, needs to be concretized? A family of cicadas
droned above the lighthouse, and the corner of my eyes
—of the figure’s eyes—caught ghosts sitting pretty
on an oak tree. I steadied my sight. Something white
and glowing dragged me through the field as if
to cleanse me—a wild dog washing its stained paws
in the extraordinariness of a golden lake.
EDEN
What exactly is it about darkness that scares the lord so much?
– Unknown
At the prosecution of Iblees, a bird
stole the show.
It was inelegant
—the bird.
It was a pelican
with a throat pouch as wide as
two open palms
placed side-by-side
as if in a prayer.
The air reeked of sulfur
and desolation, and the gasp
of Jibril could be heard
from miles out
as the pelican—mad, mad bird
—swallowed the sun
in one swift move.
All that remained was Adam
and his hunger.
All that remained
was Iblees Shaytan—cunning serpent
of God, unripened
by his ambitions.
All that remained was the silence
with its wide arms, pulling everything
into its embrace
like a clandestine lover.
Halcyon.
The gentle ruffles
of gossamer wings.
Darkness crawled
into the palm of God—
unsure, carefully—
like a ghost leaving his corpse behind
for the first time.
DEAD MENS’ DANCE
a semicolon perched on the preacher boy
’s shoulder & curled his insides
into a song.
this is the way
we were meant to begin; puppets on strings
bending to the tune of the almighty.
our life meant nothing
because grace packed her bags and left us
only with want.
slowly, we flexed our knees
and commanded our bodies
to Dance:
a sway to the right, arm flying dangerously
to the left. a jiggle as if to ask the body
to account for whatever it is carrying.
the open eye of a needle;
a new song bleeding into the ears
of God.
all of our decisions have led us here:
we sang into our palms
and tugged at the broken guitar
in the middle of it.
the semicolon continued its song
on the boy’s shoulder:
a new dirge, two open graves and a shovel
sinking into the earth’s core.
we wanted a new life.
we rolled gently into the open graves.
DAYS OF THE LAMBS
It was on one of the days that followed your loss
that the sheep, in all its blackness,
opened itself up and birthed the abomination
it carried in its stomach. We had already
set you in your forever home. We had already
wrapped you in a white garment and drowned you
in holy water when the sheep,
in its blackness, strolled unto your grave
and emptied the abomination in its stomach;
two black lambs, faceless,
each drenched in the blood of their own becoming.
And we watched with our jaws in our hands,
each of us waiting for the other
to wake you from your slumber
and ask you to move your grave
to somewhere else.
Ameen Animashaun is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poets.org, Rattle Magazine, Salamander, Lolwe, Foglifter, Vast Chasm, and elsewhere. An MFA candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, he is the 2024 recipient of the Starshine and Clay Fellowship and winner of the Academy of American Poets A. E. Claeyssens, Jr. Poetry Prize. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and his full-length manuscript was a finalist for the 2024 Sillerman First Book Prize. Additionally, his chapbook, Calling a Spade, was a finalist for the 2024 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. He is an Oddball; a butterfly.
