By Abdulkareem Abdulkareem
Salvador Dalí, 1938, oil on canvas
All things begin from the spindle,
we say—life spun from graces.
I grew like rain from rumbles of my parents’
cloud, a dark dawn, admitting growth.
In the beginning, I squeeze into existence with a head,
white, silhouette-like—formed from
the stomach of the hard earth on a farther
landscape; face formed in a hole, a body merging
into visibility. The last war of my body
was unscathed, admitting the shapes of various
dances. The second grace, where I am a boy seeking
existential relevance, my visage; like a landscape
with an equestrian man with the body of dust
pursuing the horse of his identity—relevance-seeking.
The thread of my life, stretched to the doorsill
of disappearance, the length of my language
nearing a silence. I am the last body rhyming
with the earth—becoming more illusion than truth.
Holding onto the edge of my thread, bowing to the ache
of an empty body, my fingers grip the edge of my cloth.
Nature becomes a skull.
