Vermiculture

(2025)

 

you’re walking down a street 

and your phone picks up the wi-fi 

 

signal of an old haunt, a coffee shop 

you once visited with the person 

 

you were with then, the person 

you were, you laughed together

 

drank multiple cups of tangawizi 

tea as she told you about vermiculture,

 

showed you pictures of worms 

at work, called them non-natives 

 

that sailed across the high seas 

from the old world to the new, 

 

a fact Wikipedia 

would neither confirm nor deny.

 

later you left her

… or did she you?

 

Qadr, she’d said, 

what will be already was 

 

and sometimes echo translates as ghost

 

so this is how memory works 

little stowaways borne on waves

 

sometimes soft, bruised

sometimes best buried.

 

Vanishing Point

After “I cannot myself” by Gabeba Baderoon

(2025)

 

A river returns to the river 

it once filled, drank, drowned in 

 

To come into this country

I must undo my name,

unspool myself, a spider 

caught in another’s web

 

At the airport, fluorescent 

lights flicker. ‘Welcome,’ 

they stutter in Morse

 

I feel the silk threads 

tighten.