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Desert – Rakaya Esime Fetuga

“Sometimes this city can look like a desert
concrete dunes that stretch endless
further than the London eye can see,
parched travellers riding the nine to five like camels –
fatigued, legs beginning to falter – buckling under the weight
of expectation, the weight of finding happiness in
a title, or in
a bank balance,
in a notification,
or in tiny pixel idols that
our flesh will never become

London can look like a desert when water
is a glimpse of God’s signs
and our hearts are blind
sandstorms of self-indulgence swirling up under our eyelids
grains wedged between our teeth
can’t speak – some lose belief
that there is another way”

from Desert
– Rakaya Esime Fetuga
in A KALEIDOSCOPE OF STORIES
Muslim Voices in Contemporary Poetry
Coming soon from Lote Tree Press

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