Published on 06:00 AM, March 02, 2023

Fable Factory

Double Dream of Dhaka

Illustration: Syeda Afrin Tarannum

for Maa

 

Dawn opens her eyes

And from the edges of the world,

Clouds shoot up through the pipes

Obscuring the undressing of the sun.

Her spectral, astral chest, still yellow at middle age,

Nourishes her children with eternal motion,

Churning and churning around morning news and coffee cups

—Seven sons obedient and one delinquent daughter.

 

The slowly brewing hurricane of crow's

Mechanical crow, a cosmic synchronised dynamo,

Sometimes spiritual, perhaps, sometimes almost too lively like the cold kiss of death,

Jolts the world in its orbit, cuts the umbilical cord of sleep,

And onto the screen roll the actors' credits.

 

Cars upon cars clamber on roads upon roads,

All the arteries choke with wristwatches' sorrows,

While sleepy-eyed children, shorn of dreams and unicorns,

Watch as the slow dance of death unfolds.

Through the skyline laden with future's intestines

Gets lacerated the fabric of reality.

 

Eve wraps up her night veil, exposing

White vast belly dotted with airline veins while

The moon hides behind the eggshells,

The dreams boil in sunflower oil, and in your eyes

I see flicker the auroras of Jupiter.

 

And in alleys Neptune's tears sing

The silent epitaph of our love.

 

Abdullah thinks he's the reincarnation of Lorca, which, obviously, isn't true. Break his reverie at asabdullah.ag@gmail.com