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AGHA SHAHID ALI
The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood'
First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn't wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn't speak to strangers.
And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn't I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn't know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn't have swallowed her years before?
And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you'll agree she was pretty.
And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.
--
All Good Things - Jobe
kazim ali - three poems
--
River Road
Somewhere on the road that crosses the spinster river a pilgrim approaches, praying to be the river, the sun, his walking, his barrenness or his thirst.
At dusk he finds the new moon by noticing a circular absence of stars, and the river bears children all night long.
--
Horizon
It's unbearable what you remember,
numb in a storm wanting the answer.
There's a boat that loves to drink.
You love to be tricked or called names.
Pray you quicksilver rush to me quickly make me
mad, unfasten me from shore.
At its freezing point wind shatters.
Were you faking it or really dying.
The night has a name the storm is ashamed of.
Send me to the earth's end, I have never seen it.
--
The Ninth Planet
In the shadow cast by the end of time who will believe the earth was not merely a vast plain
Faith requires a law to assure clay’s obedience to gravity and light
Who wouldn’t believe that otherwise we would slingshot into space, oceans would pour
from the earth’s stark edges. The universe is the most of human of individuals—
Lowell never saw the proof of Pluto in his lifetime:
Observing the erratic wobble of Neptune’s orbit, he plotted diagrams and equations
and left instructions as to where in the night sky the wanderer would be found
--
Kazim Ali's newest book of poetry (that I know of) is The Fortieth Day, from BOA Editions. Ali rocks. PLEASE CLICK HERE for the poet's website.
all good things - jobe --
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