S. J. Ghaus
Birthday Poem For A Dying World
I say my thanks: to teaspoons of bleach,
to the cotton mask hanging on a nail. I’m quarantined
and the sun still sets. I still run, every day,
past the cemetery rabbits, in a facile attempt
to keep living. Even the land is aging. In the Midwest,
it’s an end-times spring: green skies, a world of fraught
hearts burrowed away from the very air. The world
doesn’t usually work like this, but loss is our new
horizon. Though — death is closing in even in a good year.
Tomorrow is my birthday, and our collective decline rails
quick as a robin’s beak, gulping down a hatchling worm.
There’s a math to this. Every day, the ocean a little warmer,
the land a little more quiet. All around me, people
are dying. I wash my hands. Grocery shop
in seventeen minutes, while grackles hunch
through maples. Air is clear and it’s early yet; everywhere
carries the still dread of lurking freeze. This is April,
month of swift frosts, capable of burning a budding
garden to crisp. Birthday month. Inconquerable
month. Month of strange breezes sweeping unknown
viral quantities in or out my home — oh, I don’t know
anything of quarantine but the hardwood floor of it, slick
with soap, and the laundered smell of fear every animal
recognizes. Deer birthday. Rabbit birthday, quivering
its mass in a pile of twigs. Almost indistinguishable, if not
for the eye. Its dark, flighty moon. Good rabbit, building a nest
for babies it doesn’t know are on their way.
S. J. Ghaus is a Pakistani American writer, artist, and cultural worker for the people. They are a Tin House alum and resident, VONA/Voices of Our Nations fellow, and recipient of the 2020 Vera Meyer Strube Prize from the Academy of American Poets. You can find their work at poets.org, Poetry Daily, Hayden’s Ferry, Ecotone, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from Indiana University.
Return to September 2023 Edition
I say my thanks: to teaspoons of bleach,
to the cotton mask hanging on a nail. I’m quarantined
and the sun still sets. I still run, every day,
past the cemetery rabbits, in a facile attempt
to keep living. Even the land is aging. In the Midwest,
it’s an end-times spring: green skies, a world of fraught
hearts burrowed away from the very air. The world
doesn’t usually work like this, but loss is our new
horizon. Though — death is closing in even in a good year.
Tomorrow is my birthday, and our collective decline rails
quick as a robin’s beak, gulping down a hatchling worm.
There’s a math to this. Every day, the ocean a little warmer,
the land a little more quiet. All around me, people
are dying. I wash my hands. Grocery shop
in seventeen minutes, while grackles hunch
through maples. Air is clear and it’s early yet; everywhere
carries the still dread of lurking freeze. This is April,
month of swift frosts, capable of burning a budding
garden to crisp. Birthday month. Inconquerable
month. Month of strange breezes sweeping unknown
viral quantities in or out my home — oh, I don’t know
anything of quarantine but the hardwood floor of it, slick
with soap, and the laundered smell of fear every animal
recognizes. Deer birthday. Rabbit birthday, quivering
its mass in a pile of twigs. Almost indistinguishable, if not
for the eye. Its dark, flighty moon. Good rabbit, building a nest
for babies it doesn’t know are on their way.
S. J. Ghaus is a Pakistani American writer, artist, and cultural worker for the people. They are a Tin House alum and resident, VONA/Voices of Our Nations fellow, and recipient of the 2020 Vera Meyer Strube Prize from the Academy of American Poets. You can find their work at poets.org, Poetry Daily, Hayden’s Ferry, Ecotone, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from Indiana University.
Return to September 2023 Edition