Desire

A character with interiority
and the events that change him
over time. Unorchestrated
toward a chosen telos. No ends to dictate
what he allows to change
him – I mean I wanted to
free a character
with interior depths and events
that change him. It meant much
to see a mirror develop layers
changed by touch amid a flurry
of events — light sensitive film
processing the debris
and the clarities.
The character realized this required
a body– eyes that could flinch
at something appearing
to happen twice. In a novel few things
happen twice; they rise
to the level of the symbolic by repeating.
there are days repeating
like pages repeat to hold
new information. The pages are not
events that can change
a character. I wipe a speck
of memory off the glass. The page is dark
with words by the time
I understand I must change.

Razor

It   was   only  a  fuzz  on  the sphere  of his 
dome.  Every    evening    when     the     sun
unrolled shadows like  the  mat he laid out 
outside  the rust   orange  gate,  I wondered 
why   our   driver  moved  a  razor   over  his 
scalp. I  can  still hear  the  muezzin’s  voice
propagate   in  concentric waves   from   the
marketplace.   The   black  scythes    of   bat   
wings   harvest   orange   air.  Small   blades  
flensed off stone.  His knees  bend to  touch 
ground. His hand breaks the skin of a bowl  
of    water    to   follow   the   blade,   cleanse 
sediment in ritual purification so the call to
prayer  could   cut  through   the  compound 
unbroken.  His  stillness  in the driver’s seat 
stayed    intact   on     the   way    home  from  
school.  In time I’d  slow  down with him to 
watch how he’d touch his  head to the earth  
and   lift   back up.  One hand  furls  open in    
the    cup    of     another.    Precious    metals 
overflow the   brims    of    buildings  like   a 
crown. The city’s  glass eyes   array   around
me, golden  voices reach for    my   earlobes
and  resonate  in  my skin. The hairs on the 
back of my neck  wake  slowly, rise  up one 
by one.

Tobi Kassim was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and has lived in the United States since 2003. His poems have been in journals including The Volta, The Brooklyn Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Zocalo Public Square, and elsewhere. His chapbook Dear Sly Stone was published by Spiral Editions. He is an Undocupoets fellow, received a Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and works in New Haven’s Public Library