Poetry – Shahzeb Akhter

Cannot Keep its Lustrous Eyes

—after&for Lucie Brock-Broido

It’s a Venusian switch you got in your head implanted.
What use if it does not satisfy?

All these hands grasping thin air

Then it must be as hollow as the space the word God abounds.

On a Surrealist’s canvas, it animates itself, its serifs swerve out
Of the dimensions & clutch the hand that mocks it,

Grows up as full sleeve Basm-é-banda

On your Mangiferaindican-hand,
Grows off it & thrives.

An orchid saps you hollow until you’re just cheekbones.

                                               It is difficult to let loose of it;

If cut— botched, bleed;
ThisMagian dilemma has but Magian hope of an easing sleep.

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Title from John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.”