Simultaneous Events

by Ridwan Fasasi

Froggy5/Unsplash

after Clinton Smith

Somewhere, a fruit ripened from a dying tree. The tree forgives itself for too much love. A forest of desires is sprouting under it. A boy proposes his love to his lover. Somewhere else, a wife proposes her agony to her husband. A heart is pulled out of a body. A heart is returned. Your best friend is killed by a bullet. The policemen who shoot the shot fault the gun. A funeral is held every day for the same autopsy. A birth ceremony is held for the same reason. A man returned home from war. His child sees a stranger in a familiar body. Dusk & dawn look like two lovers playing hide and seek. A new scientist discovery says it has found a way to prolong the living. The doctors say there’s nothing to save your dying mother. God’s silence will not break over this mystery. He is surely listening and understands your frustration. A knife sits on the kitchen table, bloodless. A hand picks it & my body quivers. My mother bled from a knife wound & yet she laughed. I suffer the same penury and cry. A father advises his son: you must learn to forgive before you listen. The son seems to be offended. I am hungry, I told my reckless lover. In the shallow part of her body, a pot whistled with tenderness. The fire under it burns slowly. Believe me, the river that quenches a thirst has its own thirst of drowning the same body. I am burning.

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Ridwan Fasasi, SWAN I, is a Nigerian poet of Yoruba descent. A Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net Nominee whose works have appeared on Anomalous Press, Chestnut Review, Frontier Poetry, Euonia Review, Akpata, Lucent Dreaming, Strange Horizon, Hindsight Creative, among others. He is a reader at Anomalous Press. Find him on twitter (sorry X) @Ibn_Yushau44.