Faisal Mohyuddin
We Choose Our Own Miseries
From our mouths emerge
blasts of winter, its white fires
held within the savage
eyes of owls in the hollowest
hours of piety. Distilled
prayer. No one thirsty. Who
else speaks so brazenly
of wilting crowns, the dead
of a city split in two and starved
of memory? Carrying upon
its strained shoulders, the cure
for remembering the gold
sighs of daylight, for a horse
frozen in a field of ghost
flowers, for a summoned
quiet descending. A child’s song
says more about misery,
about the thundering depravity
of these hymns trapped in bone
than the locket slung across
a wonder-heavy heart.
The shovel’s head. A flaunt
of seedlings. An anchoring
wish in each hush of saltwater.
The palace gates. The bright
mirror into which we sink.
From our mouths emerge
blasts of winter, its white fires
held within the savage
eyes of owls in the hollowest
hours of piety. Distilled
prayer. No one thirsty. Who
else speaks so brazenly
of wilting crowns, the dead
of a city split in two and starved
of memory? Carrying upon
its strained shoulders, the cure
for remembering the gold
sighs of daylight, for a horse
frozen in a field of ghost
flowers, for a summoned
quiet descending. A child’s song
says more about misery,
about the thundering depravity
of these hymns trapped in bone
than the locket slung across
a wonder-heavy heart.
The shovel’s head. A flaunt
of seedlings. An anchoring
wish in each hush of saltwater.
The palace gates. The bright
mirror into which we sink.
--
Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (Next Page Press, 2024), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, and The Riddle of Longing. He teaches English at Highland Park High School in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies; he also serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-for-profit Narrative 4 and is a visual artist.
Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (Next Page Press, 2024), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, and The Riddle of Longing. He teaches English at Highland Park High School in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies; he also serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-for-profit Narrative 4 and is a visual artist.