MODERN SUDANESE POETRY

my husband works his fingers
into the knot muscled against my spine      & my dead
stay dead          my hair a knotted cursive language
my ligature      my grief barely literate      my amulets
knotted around my neck & wrists       my language
my language       cursive & silent       glottal & knotted
& scarring the cheeks of my dead      adorning the hair
of my dead        tallow in their braided hair
i read the books in translation      where is the poem
& circle every word i know               acacia      lupin
sandalwood & ash       they ululate      my dead
they squat like brides         over clay pots of smoke
a yolk suspended in each open eye          & some
in truth are not dead       my dead       & i am who
is lost        who is not counted among the living
the poem is not owed me        i was wed in all the colors
of my dead       the reddening     the borrowed gold
i wrote the poem in translation       i wrote the poem
in the loophole     i wrote the poem in cursive
i snarled it      i picked apart the threads & wove a shroud
i was wed in it       i unfastened     i broke my fast with apricots
furred like the ears of my dead      i looked laterally
for ancestors       i descended left & right     i read the book
in arabic      knew each letter & its sound     & did not
recognize the words for tallow     for ululate      my dead
my languages      my ligatures      smoke in my loosened hair

*Originally appears in POETRY

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SAFIA ELHILLO is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019). In addition to appearing widely in journals and anthologies, her work has been translated into several languages and commissioned by Under Armour and the Bavarian State Ballet. She is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.