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No Home in This Land

included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano)

Rasaq Malik

Akashic Books

Cover art by Sokari Douglas Camp

Purchase:

  • Akashic Books

Someday I Will Be No More

This house will become a haven of ghosts,
a recluse for dead things to reincarnate in
the smell of dust that billows in each room;
in the frames of portraits hanging on the walls;
in the silence that remains after the death
of a beloved. Someday I will lie in bed, lifeless,
my body and my dreams ceased
by the hurried hand of a clock. Someday I will
be no more and this house will remain unoccupied,
a heritage left untouched except by the inevitable
presence of dense silence, by the cracks invented
by time, by the rust created by sun. Someday I
will leave and never return to sit on those sofas,
to watch the TV and giggle, to dine on this table,
to sip water from the jug there, to sleep in bed
as dusk arrives, to laugh at stories sweetened
by the lips of Grandpa, to learn from the mystery
that hides in his grey hair. Someday I will become
a coffin decked with bouquets of flowers; a coffin
bearing sand, lowered into the grave; waved at
by mourners who, after the funeral, will continue
to live, as usual.

Rasaq Malik
No Home in This Land by Rasaq Malik Download Image
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