Two Poems by Taz Rahman

Ramadan

The hours play out each shadow: bluebells,
wild garlic, the flowering quince spread

each inch of the morning, I measure their
three-sixty turns elongating, shortening,

drowning the first hint of bumblebees. The
clock wasps, amoral lashes keep tab on

the lengthening minutes of the sun, I
serenade each fly landing on thighs wanting

to be exposed, I want to subjugate restless
souls by lying still, splash savage wings in

lachrimae murmuring non-violence
incanting the whole lunar month – this

whole April, my merciful axe is a blade
sheathed in bacchanal, daddy longlegs

still forming, fit snug inside my half-glass
lent out to the wind. At the vertex of sun

I dream up a tramontane, a gust to figwort
my glands, quench each parch. The day

done, at sunset I am mad, certified, I’ve
re-lived all the berries crushed, and in

Kincraig St the calla lily in the garden front
looking up to the last of the crimson, its

spadix thrusting a yellow pine for the sky
drifting from the milky spathe wanting to

hold on, I walk past unacknowledged – I’m
on a mission to calm the guttural Bay of

Bengal. The first droplet is a lightning rod
flute to temper each sand-grain fit for a

palm to dip, imprint a dusky maghrib
azan – the day then begins all over again.

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Yellow quivers inside the light bulb, nowhere
to go, a room is filled in the slow limbic mimicry

of curtains wind-washing faces, bodies coiling,
uncoiling, hands held, unheld, lips smeared

in yarrow, lips let gone, fur curled up in the
corner of the bed like a dusky marble cake –

years caught in sniffles I should put away for
good – acts in an over-stretched play, what

to write in, what to cross out, retire as ivy
gossip in ringlets. I am told that dried

neem leaves from back east keep out worms,
deter insects from chewing veins, shawls

come out creased only from the weight
of a dishevelled season shorn of hairballs.

I am scarred by feral summers – the wildest
feral never lets the eyelids kiss. I fear leaves

losing translucence to grow rings under my
eyes, make room for aging in guttural sighs

in dim turns around each room I enter, the
hours turning out all the lights and there is a

version of me stuck in another April of the
sharpest sting walking a full moon to find

laughter cackling in larches streaking sunlight,
goading ants sideways to climb up the limbs of

a last teen dawn. Tal-y-Bont once advised each
new arrival to keep off the woods after dark so

hornbeams could creole nights into the embers
of a dewy auroral, buildings and trees could rise

to touch the skies, find new feet at their base to
stir into the morning tea. Old Ken I knew, once

said that youth is wasted on the young. I want to
penance all my days combined, sniff aster to the

chime of ropey leashes clattering flagpoles, let a
red dragon hover green and white, inherit the wind.

Taz Rahman is a Cardiff-based writer of Bengali origin. He has been published in Poetry Wales, South Bank Poetry, Anthropocene, Honest Ulsterman, Nation Cymru, Culture Matters, and in various anthologies. He judged the 2021 Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition and is a poetry collection peer reviewer for the Books Council of Wales. He was awarded a place in the 2021 Literature Wales writer development programme Representing Wales, and was mentored by Zoë Brigley. In 2020, he was selected for poetry masterclasses with Gillian Clarke and Caleb Femi. He is the founder of the YouTube poetry channel ‘Just Another Poet’, which is supported by the Books Council of Wales and Literature Wales.