Published in Spring 2024 Online Folio
blessed be the body in death
& blessed be the hands touching
the body in death to know the coldness
of the body, the hands carrying
the body in death, the hands folding
the bedsheets that reek of the body
before death & in death. blessed be the
stillness of the body in death, the smell
of the body that shows how quick the
body decays in death & how sad that
the body, before death, never understands
the ordinariness at the end of life.
blessed be my grandmother’s body that,
in death, was carried tenderly
from her bed to the casket
& to the grave. blessed be her body wrapped
in a burial shroud, prayed on by the bereaved who bowed
to Allah as they prepared
the body for the earth.
blessed be the last days of her life:
the stroke deepening, ravaging her to
bones, to the emptiness of healing.
blessed be the silence of her mouth in death & the shut doors
of her eyes.
blessed be the horse of grief trampling the bodies of the bereaved,
the birds howling in the sky on the day of her passing,
the sky clouded & heavy with sorrow.
This piece is from our Spring 2024 African Writing Online Folio, an online-exclusive extension of our special issue, “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations,” guest edited by Chris Abani. You can read more from our Spring 2024 issue, available for purchase in print and digital forms here.
Rasaq Malik Gbolahan is a Nigerian poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Nation, Transition, and elsewhere. In 2017, Rattle and Poet Lore nominated his poems for the Pushcart Prize. He was shortlisted for Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2017. He was a finalist for Sillerman First Book for African Poets in 2018.
