Red is the color of the night of the massacred

Ridwan Fasasi

The lamb is quietened down with

The damp smell of blood. All mixed with

The silvery edge of death, sharp glint

knifing through flesh. It's one of these nights

that the lamb, in all of its whiteness,

do not remember the taste of milkweeds.

The wolves rejoice, howling through

Brown holes in wooden doors. How

The sound travels through flesh and bones,

Translucent, calling & calling. Ma, the day

before said: there are voices the living

must not hearken to. Say, her boys

must clothe themselves as lambs, must

wear the furs of milkness. But the boys

do not remember the taste of milkweeds,

or the blue laughter on our mother's face—

Maybe It's all we remember or do not remember

before the slaughter. The river springs

through the future, & my son points to

a photograph of the lamb. On his face,

I can still see the bloodied lamb at the

front door. Its body, the ruined eyes of

mercy. The flesh and the wound in it,

orange red & the wolves do not sing.

Ridwan Fasasi, SWAN I, es un editor Nigeriano, escritor, y curador de arte de descendecia Yoruba. Nominado al Pushcart Prize y Best of the Net, su obra ha aparecido en ANMLY, Chestnut Review, Frontier Poetry, Eunoia Review, Akpata, Lucent Dreaming, Strange Horizon, entre otros. Fue el ganador del 2024 Labori Prize de poesía y el Ignyte Award de Mejor Poesía Especulativa. Su trabajo también ha estado en los finalistas del SprinNg Annual Poetry Contest, Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize, Lucky Jefferson Poetry & Prose Contest, Splendor of Dawn Poetry Contest, SOBAF Poetry Slam, y del 2024 Akachi Prize for Literature. Es lector para Anomalous Press y revisor en D'lit Review.

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