"a bottle of gin pretends consciousness inside many mouths" by Ammara Younas from GLASS: A JOURNAL OF POETRY

a bottle of gin pretends consciousness inside many mouths

I remember the mouth an empty wretch
and then an ecstasy unbridled horizon racing
beneath Archangels' abandoned horses
remember the mountain poets of Spring cup the notoriety
as they mouthed Allah Allah Allah
their sisters mothers lovers disappeared inside their mouths
and for once their voice was softer than the verses
they spun in the pigmented God's Hollow
I remember a kiss as it was wedding as it was prayer
as it was sin forking a high tide parting seas like Moses
I burnished that tongue myself
I undressed the layers it collected when it crouched unmoving
for years
like a sedimentary rock
I remember God as a foetus God as a bodach
God as a lonesome dove paralysed, wearing the I
wearing the worrisome We alone
& as he softened me with his tongue he slept and dreamed
that he told Nietzsche he'd be dying very soon
I fear the dimensions
string tears for the dimensions
grieve with the dimensions leaking through God's very eyes
he touched me after he painted a joyride colours unbecoming
& when he sloshed out buckets of new languages
they carried ersatz silhouettes & replica nouns
& when he was nowhere to be found again
I was sure his dream wasn't a dream
(if God were here, would we need language?)
I held a special feast and kissed everyone
so long, solipsism
the drops of me that flushed through God's frozen belly
dreamed of him asking
mother, finally, I've become myself
mother, am I even recognisable anymore?

Copyright © 2025 Ammara Younas All rights reserved
from Glass: A Journal of Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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