The Geography of Want and Other Poems by Ismail Bala
The Geography of Want Take me where the hours loosen their hold and stories go on breeding their small disasters. Between one arrival and the next, we learn the difficult grammar of wanting. At night, the body becomes a country whose borders no hand can fully cross. A name appears. A face flickers. Somewhere, a stranger rehearses tenderness for someone he has never touched. We trade our silences through glass, each offering the other a carefully lit room, each concealing the darkness beyond it. Desire is an old animal that knows the shortest road to the door but never quite remembers why it came. Those I once called mine return in fragments: a laugh caught in the rafters, a shadow crossing the courtyard, a voice that gathers itself just as sleep closes over me. Outside, the trees are keeping their counsel. Something winged stirs in their branches. Something without a face waits at the threshold. I turn towards the night and let the unfinished world dream me elsewhere. An Intimate Perfo...