File #2243: "Dzukogi_Casualties.pdf"
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We Are All Casualties of Our Absence
when you are diabetic, a little thing as athlete-foot can grow a mouth
that, if allowed, will swallow—first, the toe—then your leg,
and often your whole life—My wife sometimes sings at the kitchen
sink. Somewhere behind me I could feel her grief, sprawled over,
pacing like a thick frame of dark, fashioned after my own body.
I don’t see how anyone could stop a beast like that from consuming me.
But the thing that terrifies me with loud footsteps, live inside of her—
a body absorbing grief like a moose without flinching.
Growing older is but learning to house grief inside our bodies.
We are at the mercy of time’s fury. I burst into tears often hoping
the road gets slippery for what is chasing after me. Under
my breath is a country drowning from the weight of its own
worries. Under my breath I pulled up a chair. A prayer soothes the beast
in my chest—There is guilt, there is me absorbed in
the thought that I’ve booked a flight to America, for myself and my wife,
so all her loved ones could die behind her back.
Bio
Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet and Asst. professor of English at Mississippi State
University. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021),
winner of the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the 2022 Julie Suk Award and the
2022 finalist for the Nigeria Prize in Literature. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships
from the Nebraska Art Council, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Pen America, and Ebedi
International Residency. His poetry is featured in various magazines including POETRY,
Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, and
Prairie Schooner. Saddiq lives and writes from Starkville, Mississippi.
when you are diabetic, a little thing as athlete-foot can grow a mouth
that, if allowed, will swallow—first, the toe—then your leg,
and often your whole life—My wife sometimes sings at the kitchen
sink. Somewhere behind me I could feel her grief, sprawled over,
pacing like a thick frame of dark, fashioned after my own body.
I don’t see how anyone could stop a beast like that from consuming me.
But the thing that terrifies me with loud footsteps, live inside of her—
a body absorbing grief like a moose without flinching.
Growing older is but learning to house grief inside our bodies.
We are at the mercy of time’s fury. I burst into tears often hoping
the road gets slippery for what is chasing after me. Under
my breath is a country drowning from the weight of its own
worries. Under my breath I pulled up a chair. A prayer soothes the beast
in my chest—There is guilt, there is me absorbed in
the thought that I’ve booked a flight to America, for myself and my wife,
so all her loved ones could die behind her back.
Bio
Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet and Asst. professor of English at Mississippi State
University. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021),
winner of the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the 2022 Julie Suk Award and the
2022 finalist for the Nigeria Prize in Literature. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships
from the Nebraska Art Council, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Pen America, and Ebedi
International Residency. His poetry is featured in various magazines including POETRY,
Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, and
Prairie Schooner. Saddiq lives and writes from Starkville, Mississippi.