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Explorer

By Kazim Ali

I fear dispersal but the resounding really sounds may be full of echo
or echolocation for the next round

Eye rowed in the guest book of God my many sacred tongues
body and bow

Fingers spell now all the spaces I open
You now verse now open oh pen

Cacti quiver for a century
In the desert I swam myself earthword to know

No time on earth and no breath no dearth
Hollowed out into architecture eternal

Who argues with rhyme or snow
Who knows the space in your here

The space in the storm so finely bowed
The space in snow no one nears

Poet Bio

Kazim Ali, a brown man with salt-and-pepper curly hair and smoky eyes, smiles at you.

Poet, editor, and prose writer Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom to Muslim parents of Indian descent. In 2003 Ali co-founded Nightboat Books and served as the press’s publisher until 2007. Ali has taught at Oberlin College and the low-residency Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

See More By This Poet

More Poems About The Mind

A Wyandot Cradle Song

By Bertrand N. O. Walker

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward in the water 
     The great old owl is waking, day will go. 

Rest thee and fear not, little one, 
     Flitting fireflies come to light you on your way 
To the fair land of dreams, while in the grasses 
     The happy cricket chirps his merry lay. 

Tsa-du-meh watches always o’er her little one, 
     The great owl cannot harm you, slumber on 
’Till the pale light comes shooting from the eastward, 
     And the twitter of the birds says night has gone.

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