Wundrkut Forever Ghazal

A turntable scratched-up cento

Where are you now? Must we say farewell tonight? So many of us wonder.

God sobs in my arms, a wounded gazelle tonight. They stay for wonder.

Up in a pot of rice, up from a human zoo. Twisting, sleeping heads of monsters.

Rupture the root. Route: all the places we came to, we came from wonder.

Nights he rocked shows, the itch of this tune in his hands. Temples of boom,

pyramid of afternoons, carving with his hands. The sweat he gave for wonder.

Derecho, emergency. A snap built up in the sound on every panicked highway.

Yesterday, candy: salt-water taffy, tsokolate—the taste of wonder.

Reading: setlist crumpled in back pocket. Winding waists, can’t forget the glow.

Ellipsis: folding the harmonies holding you, Niki forgave your wonder.

Knowing what the frame around the portrait knows. The medicine hurts,

too. Its honey-smoke in the fog that night, the smiling face of wonder.

Unmarked crown & royal. behind a counter. mixer. after school. skipping

pantry in your chest. Your skratches, consonant. Mistakes? Raw wonder.

To be shaped I want, yes, color in my gods. Inventing home

from no words at all & every empty that carries the stain of wonder.

Forward, elbow! Kiss hands to vinyl. Be no one. Be music surgeon, ghost.

Be champion. Let none steal, tear down, or gamble away your wonder.

On blood, what feeds—let us steady. Household birds & cats. Such intimacy,

jungle. Kaps. A burning leaf perfumes these needs, its after-ache of wonder.

Red & blinking, decades you crossfade. In the museum of memory, the missing

songs—chosen, then lost—pursue: “ Yo Deejay! Accumulate our wonder!”

Engines grinding, rotating, smokin’. Gotta bring some glide around.

Inhaling bassline, ooh wee, clinging. Brown. Its every shade of wonder.

Visit to where the name is known toward the earth, & heaven

bows down in love without end, the dust there made of wonder.

Exist, what if I do? In a few flashes in my beloveds’ eyes. Longing & restless,

I know the jugglery of the world’s hubbub—its constant splay of wonder.

Rifted, Hari, precipice in solar plexus? Can’t go on alone? Reach out. You’re held.

It’s an amulet. I think of Silver, put on Kaya’s playlist. & I pray for wonder.

(Rest. Chew on the thread of silence. Dip in Inkwater before you slip it thru

the needle’s only eye. Team Danger. Life, kiss forever. Eric’s way: of Wundr.)

Notes:

Except for the italics, this poem is gathered, gratefully, from samples and interpolations of fifteen ghazals and three songs, by (in order of appearance): Agha Shahid Ali; Danni Quintos; Maria Bolaños; John Murillo; Luisa A. Igloria; Aimee Nezhukumatathil; Purple Hearts Social Club; Angel Nafis; Jamila Woods; Edil Hassan; Gunnar Ekelöf, tr. by Rika Lesser; Tarfia Faizullah; Zeina Hashem Beck; Patricia Smith (“ooh wee” italicized in original); Ghalib, tr. by Aijaz Ahmad and W.S. Merwin; Jigar Moradabadi; DJ Wundrkut; and Sade.

Source: Poetry (January/February 2024)