Poems by Faizal Deen

October 2018

&“COOLIES” TO BE CONTINUED.

swallowing      dream1
“We are in the West now. Screeching violins,
clichés. Mom galore.”

 

I am not sure what they are saying.

You are so unloved you forget your name.

What are they saying?

 

rat-passage
“the shadow mist was seeping from under the bed”
                                                                                  Fazlah
                                                                              “putting his Mazda on!”
                                                          “—and again I saw it: that grimace”
                                                                     “Granpa,”
                                                              Mo-Ham thru Dads
                                                                      Madrassi
                                                                        ratoon
                                                                                      “incandescent Brylcream”
                                                Berbice R.
 Oriyu in tangles,
                                    “huh?”

“glucose”
canes talk, granpa, oral, vocal, or shouted flute & bone,

“BEARER DOES NOT WRITE”
[ameriIndic]

the river’s water goddess
shoots, sugar-canes: 

“Did you find your waiting country?”

&“coolies”
                                           to be continued.

 

***

 

“THERE ARE WHITE MEN IN THE BUSH”

 

                                                                                                               10am

“Come closer, nuh?”

                       

“I’ve got frogs”
“wulloms, mullows”
wheatgerm Mountain Chicken
Yesterday, “I see what you mean. I see it now.”
Sister Brian’s “discipline”
Insulin uncles: “We can’t save them!
Tug-of-Pliny’s dicks in boats,
without guffaws.
Monkeys: Jackie1, Jackie2.
“Magick”: Please, don’t thyme Tom Harry.

“Where does your dream come from?”

In the next Discoverie,
                                                reading
                              faith [namaz, wizard beards]          reveries
     blasted letters                                                                                             breeding
                                                                        naughts [Marmaduke Pickthall]

 

night.2 Once

 

 

                                               “There are White men in the bush”

                                                                                                   BEWARE
                                                                                                    OF DOG

 

                                                             In hybrid hands

                                                             a laughing nuthatch

                                                             Mud Lake: “Dear Azeeza,

                                                             Kitchissippi soursop rossicum

                                                             Mundo! Mundo!

 

Faizal Deen was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and immigrated to Canada in the late 1970s. He studied English literature and language at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and currently lives in Ottawa, where he is working on a new poetry collection, “The Waiting Country.”

 

 

1       PART    THE STORY

2 MODERN POLITICS

                  Rahaman, d. 1987