My fear so vast, on it, I can erect a country.
I often wondered: is a dead body too silent
to have a shadow? In my nightmare
there is no breathable air. My father wanted
a woman who would be silent as a corpse.
My son cannot wait for his milk teeth to fall
from his mouth. He wants to pick them up,
save them below his pillow like bits of a puzzle—
perhaps a map to something valuable.
On a wall that has since become a pilgrim’s site,
a dead man’s face appears.
Men visit, hungry to believe a mirage.
Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Inside the Flower Room, selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Oxford Review of Books, Poetry Society of America, Gulf Coast, African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. He has won fellowships from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ebedi International Writers Residency.