An Extra Note On Brokenness

By Hassan A. Usman

There’s no figurative way to say this: I’m heartbroken.
It’s sunset again— I arrange my body where there’s a flicker,
learning new ways to excite my grief. Light, even light,
is damned to darkness. A bird flutters in the sky, asks
why my kind of ruin is so exceptional. Say, the night
after my father envisioned our home breaking into
the echoes of a birdsong, he threw his breaths
into the mouth of a whirlwind & drowned his name
in sea water which was too unkind to return what isn’t
its own. In this poem, I do not want to reverberate the
eulogies of my father, but how do I deliver this loneliness
in pertinence? Death is surely the son of a bitch,
who draws a graph & frames your companion on a scale
of nothingness? I have, forever, been unbelieving to miracles.
In my dreams, I discover a fortune, and quickly, the nights perish.
What if tomorrow instead of dead leaves I’m garbed
with daffodils? My eyes sift sunrise, and stutter,
what ritual contributes to new beginnings?
Daily, I hold fast to faith, paint the portrait of desert
with rainfall. But whatever I hold, do not hold me back.
Joy, when it comes in the morning, is fashioned
in a place our loss can not reach.
My brother has been wishing, and this is an example:
Lord, I want to be sculpted into a chrysanthemum,
fit me into the space between a star and the moon.
At home, my mother offers a hymn to the finality of
our misery, says though we’re unfortunate,
though we’re unfortunate, we’re alive and beautiful.
My mother so naive, I wonder if God remembers her
in His own prayers.

BIO:
Hassan A. Usman, NGP 2, is an emerging poet from Lagos, Nigeria. He studies Counselor Education at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. His works are/forthcoming in Paper Lanterns, Icefloe Press, Trampset, Olumo Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Lunaris Review, The Shallow Tales Review, and elsewhere. He’s on Twitter and Instagram @Billio_Speaks.