unburying my father because he doesn't like it down there

Ammara Younas

on sunday when the hurricane hits

i take his body out from underneath the earthbed

he naps in his mucous membrane & the miniature replica of his mother’s village

he likes easy cinema (he always pretended to like god more)

so i lure him out with a movie

the smell of afterage precedes him

there’s yellow sungrass

the tingling shrubbery carpeting his dead body in spatial activity in shadow dancing

bugs hold conference in his hollow eye sockets

i say the earth certainly knows how to fill a dead space with percussion

in his belly there’s discoloured distension not unlike the face of a pixelated moon

even now i can’t say he was gone too soon

i check his mouth: disease & still water

i throw a pebble in it & never hear it hit the end

i throw another & never see it make a ripple

i put my ear next to it: a labyrinth of horrible white noise

i open my mouth to say something

maybe a prayer maybe a ghostsong

& sentences disintegrate like smoke-ends of a promise that we never made with each

other my father did not learn sonar navigation

instead  he liked to touch & cause disorder to convince himself that he could be seen

against the dull grey background

& he was almost there almost seen

if only he had touched softly

AMMARA YOUNAS is a poet and writer from Gujranwala, Pakistan. Her work has found a home, or is soon to, in spaces like Rattle, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Tahoma Literary Review, wildscape. literary journal, Gabby & Min’s Literary Review, The Imagist, Small World City, Lakeer, and Resonance.