My poem got shortlisted for The Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Ecstatic Poetry Prize 2025.
Lote Tree Press, the organisers of the Poetry Prize, said they had over 500 submissions that they couldn’t just select a top 3 but a Highly Commended and a Shortlisted list as well.
I’m grateful that my poem “Conversations with a Saint” was selected.
I have way too many things to share–frustrations and grief over my country’s abiding racism and wayang-ness which will only increase as election season comes upon us, bearing witness to a genocide and atrocities still being committed with impunity, and seeing the global decline to fascism–but I will start with this poem.
Perhaps the rest of the words will come after.
Photo by Jonathan Ybema on Unsplash
Conversations with a Saint
I
After a long train ride past rolling hills
and peaceful streams
where I saw cows and foxes and
lots and lots of sheep
sleeping and grazing
hopping and living
I became greatly distressed!
And went crying to the saint,
“Can you imagine if I was a sheep?!
Where would my 4 hoofs and
hocks and knees go in sujud?
My tajweed lessons
- all gone to waste!
My tongue can only go “Baa!”
And on Eid al-Adha
Oh my God!”
“My son, slow down and breathe.
You’re not a sheep. Go make sujud.
And recite the Qur’an.
And save money for the sacrifice.”
More distressed than before,
“Son? Can’t he see I’m clearly a woman!”
II
Overcome by regrets over past sins
I went to the saint
again. He said,
“You cannot un-ding a dong
but you can always ring-a-ling.”
III
At sermon today, the scholar said,
“Crying over your sins
will extinguish the fires of Hell.”
I recounted my sins on my
walk home,
each one bigger than before.
In the market,
a crowd is laughing hysterically
around the saint.
I saw familiar faces from
the sermon earlier,
laughing with tears streaming
down their beards
“What is this? We’re supposed
to be crying over our sins!”, I huffed.
The saint said, “We don’t see you
crying.
Yet all our tears have turned Hell
into Surfers’ Paradise.”
IV
After three hours of heartfelt pouring
to the saint, he said,
“We think entirely too much
and too little of ourselves.”
And
“I am always waiting to be
deliriously surprised by God
instead of anticipating being
violently disappointed by life.”
V
I wish I could
un-ding this dong
But I can only ring-a-ling
___
As always, thank you for your support and motivation for me to keep writing, to keep submitting my work to competitions and awards. Anything that gets selected or chosen, I dedicate them all to all of you.