Faisal Mohyuddin
Faisal Mohyuddin (he/him/his) is a writer, educator, and visual artist. He is the author of The Displaced Children of Displaced Children (Eyewear, 2018) and The Riddle of Longing (Backbone, 2017). His work has been been featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast and the Ours Poetica video series on YouTube, and appeared recently in Poetry, Poet Lore, Kweli, RHINO, and the anthologies New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (Red Hen Press, 2021) and What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People (University Press of Kentucky, 2023). He teaches English at Highland Park High School in suburban Chicago and creative writing at the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern University, and he serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-for-profit Narrative 4.
Lamplight
Let me, too,believe
as the snowbelieves,
in being ableto unlatch
every lock,translate
absence intolonging,
longing intobird, flight
into prayer,prayer
into key—and this ever-
gatheringweight of loss
into lamp-light, river-
song, a sonbarbed with
questions,impatience,
perhaps evenhis father’s
unstillness,his terror.
as the snowbelieves,
in being ableto unlatch
every lock,translate
absence intolonging,
longing intobird, flight
into prayer,prayer
into key—and this ever-
gatheringweight of loss
into lamp-light, river-
song, a sonbarbed with
questions,impatience,
perhaps evenhis father’s
unstillness,his terror.
Last Day of September
For once, you’re not thinking about death,yours or anyone else’s. You’re still, still
buried beneath blankets, awake in a tremblingblue darkness, your aching back aching
for fists. There is time enough, the silent treestell you, to linger a while longer in this
stillness, a while before the chickadees whistledawn’s praises, before you too have to rise
from bed, reassemble your outward-facingface, and scurry off to catch the earliest train,
to face a world so far from civil that it hurtsto keep hoping for something less broken.
So you stay put, trace the uneven contoursof your wife’s dream-agitated breathing:
her hours of unrevealed worries compressedinto a meager consolation prize of minutes.
You’re torn between offering a comfortingtouch and spoiling her sleep, or not intruding.
Imagining the endless stresses of the restof her day, you decide to be sensible,
to hold back, to let her nightmares fizzlewithout interference. Any spell of rest,
even a tortured kind, is better, you know.Now, as a sputter of gasps startles you almost
enough to finally rouse her, a sobering visiontakes hold in your mind, calms your blood—
how after dinner tonight, her lovely eyeswill irritably chide you over a bowl of blood
orange sorbet because she is so exhausted,and you both know you are the reason why.
Just as you are about to spin some lameapology that will only sour the mood
even more, the sudden rollick of your son’sunfettered laughter, sparked by the silly
new book he won’t sit still without, softensthe strain in the imagined scene, returns
you to this pre-dawn warmth, to your modest,yet charmed life beside your sleeping wife.
Impossible, to not sing God’s praises today,knowing you and she are both alive
and kicking and happy, with your son stilla boy, still asleep just down the hall, still
a regular interloper in your bed where all threeof you can share a serenity made sacred by
the galloping rush of time. All this yoursto contemplate as these first days of autumn
arrive, before they burst with color, beforethe benevolent spiders disappear from
their mangled webs and the songbirds subduetheir sweet orisons—before another October
arrives on horseback, lording a trophy highabove its head, then looking mournful
as it rubs off the golden sheen with a fistand tosses the tarnished cup in your direction.
buried beneath blankets, awake in a tremblingblue darkness, your aching back aching
for fists. There is time enough, the silent treestell you, to linger a while longer in this
stillness, a while before the chickadees whistledawn’s praises, before you too have to rise
from bed, reassemble your outward-facingface, and scurry off to catch the earliest train,
to face a world so far from civil that it hurtsto keep hoping for something less broken.
So you stay put, trace the uneven contoursof your wife’s dream-agitated breathing:
her hours of unrevealed worries compressedinto a meager consolation prize of minutes.
You’re torn between offering a comfortingtouch and spoiling her sleep, or not intruding.
Imagining the endless stresses of the restof her day, you decide to be sensible,
to hold back, to let her nightmares fizzlewithout interference. Any spell of rest,
even a tortured kind, is better, you know.Now, as a sputter of gasps startles you almost
enough to finally rouse her, a sobering visiontakes hold in your mind, calms your blood—
how after dinner tonight, her lovely eyeswill irritably chide you over a bowl of blood
orange sorbet because she is so exhausted,and you both know you are the reason why.
Just as you are about to spin some lameapology that will only sour the mood
even more, the sudden rollick of your son’sunfettered laughter, sparked by the silly
new book he won’t sit still without, softensthe strain in the imagined scene, returns
you to this pre-dawn warmth, to your modest,yet charmed life beside your sleeping wife.
Impossible, to not sing God’s praises today,knowing you and she are both alive
and kicking and happy, with your son stilla boy, still asleep just down the hall, still
a regular interloper in your bed where all threeof you can share a serenity made sacred by
the galloping rush of time. All this yoursto contemplate as these first days of autumn
arrive, before they burst with color, beforethe benevolent spiders disappear from
their mangled webs and the songbirds subduetheir sweet orisons—before another October
arrives on horseback, lording a trophy highabove its head, then looking mournful
as it rubs off the golden sheen with a fistand tosses the tarnished cup in your direction.
