When faith blows inside a glass – Misbah Ansari

 

 

It dances,

 

To DOcility, counting a second,

and flapjacks to the morning Azan.*

 

It hops towards REminiscence,

to swirl at the edge,

toppling with one leg oscillating,

in the air of oblivion between temple arcs,

as its knees ricochet of queries,

in ballet position, curved of money plants,

in a tumbler of vacuum.

 

It leaps over MImosa,

dug at the kernel,

smelling of dowry clad in bridal hijab,

blingy, dusty, mammoth, dowry.

 

It crunches on FAllacies,

like butterflies fluttering on cucurbit bulbs,

incinerating into a heap of iron and paper,

heap of crackly, teensy, Easter eggs.

Heaps of Santa’s beard hair.

 

It saddles on SOlitude,

along the rims of terracotta,

mulled in soil with

Anne – lids kissing, grooving into spaces,

like hand dogs,

shadowy, imbecile, teenage-y, white-washed.

 

It swims inside a pit of LAger,

lashing with the golden of amber,

breathing, wheezing,

to the Hogwarts butterbeer foam.

 

It then lays, inside the TIn coffin,

sizzling to the intensity of mongrel breath,

whose velocities bubble at the bottom,

like paradox, ifs, buts, tissues, Caesar’s Cremation.

 

 

*Azan – the Muslim call to ritual prayer made by a muezzin from the minaret of a mosque (or now often played from a recording).

 

 

 

Misbah Ansari is a 16-year-old from India, currently residing in Mumbai. She is an avid reader, writer and enjoys public speaking. Her work has been published in ‘The Hindu’ newspaper.