Isolation

I heard on the news 
to thank someone, today. 
I turned and turned 
and saw only my shadow. 

ξ

I Have Fallen in Love Once and Forgotten How 

Out here, it’s distance that will keep us together, 
and alive, says the man on the news. 

We are all in our cities, houses, 
reduced spaces, like we were once inside our mothers, 
in little universes made of blood and membranes.                                                                 

But my mind is outside, somewhere else, 
in a whirlpool of light, in a place I cannot find on a map,
now that a little virus has its arms wrapped around the world.

As a way of saying I want my body to disappear, 
today, I’m even in a much smaller space — the tub, 
smelling of soap and Dettol, eyes closed, 
poking finger into bubbles I stirred into life with my toes.  

I open my eyes to explore the silence that will follow 
the sunlight circling on my knee.
But my body is only a shadow under a spotlight. 
And I know only what my hands tend toward, 
my heart: a lily between two lives I call desire. 

ξ

Wartime President

Listening to the muezzin from my phone, 
I remember my mother’s prayer, 
I remember seeing her cut waterleaf. 

What will I hear if you cut yourself and bleed, 
I asked? Silence, she replies.

Out in the air, away from my nostalgia,
the virus has the vigor of napalm.
And the president says he is a wartime president.
And I wonder why 
must we make everything into a fight 
before we can declare victory?

ξ

Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press 2021). His poems have appeared or forthcoming in Oxford Review of Books, Kenyon Review, Salamander, Southeast Review, and Obsidian, among others. He is currently a PhD student in English at UNL.