Prayer for the meat-clung bone

Sadia Hassan

God, when you raise the dead,raise him last. Let him rota little longer than the others.Let him panic as his memorystaggers towards the youngest of us.Gag his grave with the milk-sourstench of girls, the hot anddamp heat of small mouthsfervent for a mother who seesa knife and thinks: brother.And before he can beg sister, sister!And before he can plead forgive me?Pack his mouth with flint.Set fire to every cottony tooth,tongue and tender meat-clungbone. If you ran red the dirtdrawls of our girlhood,if you gave languageto your girl slaves,allow the pebblesto gather in praiseof the scorpion’ssinging sting.

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Photo:
Amal Jama

Sadia Hassan is a Somali American writer from Atlanta, GA. Her chapbook Enumeration is forthcoming from Akashic Books as part of The New Generation African Poets: Chapbook Set (Saba). You can find some of her most recent work in Longreads, Boston Review, Seventh Wave Mag, and The Writer’s Chronicle. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Mississippi and the winner of the 2020 Hurston Wright Award for College Writing.

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