in the courtyard,
the yards of cloth surround our
stretched out bodies lying in the rusted beds that creak in the Omdurman night under the Omdurman
moon &
by the masjid’s minaret
lights, our
hearts eat the night
& vomit the dark, our
hearts have teeth that
will clink against the brim of the shai cup come morning/
the brim sharing the same words the mouth gives to another’s
ear
//
& we see the neighbors through the cracks of the courtyard wall/ we see the neighbors
in the light of the Omdurman sun/
jiyran bil hayta, which is to say, another phrase for family, bereft
of the insistence of the blood pact, reliant instead
upon the routine of the skin of the hand like
sand like
skin like
sand
passing the cup of sugar back &
forth through the opening/
passing the bit of gossip/ the dried hilu mur
//
& this may be any one of the days after the hijra but before
the war
& the scratch on the nail is the
ghost we hear when we
think ourselves shrouded from the bee’s nest hung upon the baobab in the
courtyard/ the same one that will be
cut down
before the war but after
the revolution
//
but imagine for instance, we sleep for
centuries & it feels like
seconds/
the baobab drying out & curdling our bodies but
watching over them, still/ the streaks of dawn
piercing, still & time
in the courtyard might stop or time
in the courtyard might rot/
a rot
where our bodies
lie
Painting Courtesy of Our Featured Artist Fahed Mohammed Shehab
