bliss station ~ poetry

a shroud with red & grey

for Beirut, for the exodus of migrant laborers during the pandemic, for the displaced

(after CACTUS WITH CITY IN THE BACKGROUND ~ Aslm Abu Shakra)

*

for a moment, when the clothesline snapped

the grey shirt on it stayed in the air / its sleeves

a shrug, a red stain on the pocket, its buttoned

promise / when the city they are snaps they sway

in the air / their eyes muzzling a sight that is

a scent that is a sound that is a sense of some

wafting away / in a moment, the city they were

all the minding all the grey all the togetherness

all rusty cauldron origins of polished forges

became a city with a cactus in the foreground

its roots a confused skein on the windowsill

far from its needle reach for a desert want

over the wound, a scab of skyscrapers / & when

a shroud of flesh-smog gravely memories that

when all they held onto was pulled away they

stayed like that grey shirt on that clothesline

under a far & monsoon part of that sky / but the

shrug, in the fall, unbuttons into a reaching out

a figuring in / with stained prophecy at its heart

~ Ajay

25/8/2020