Lynda Tavakoli: WCNSF

wounded child no surviving family

eyes unshuttered

like a stare of owls

they swallow the dark

with parched tongues

their identities inked

on the surface of skin

as signatures for posterity

    

Noor (Light)

                    Khalid (Eternal)

                                       Layla (Night)

                                                        Nasir (Protector)

asleep upon the hands

of dead mothers

they remember the before

when touch was a cradle

of belonging

and the after a bloom

of stars in paradise  

   

Aziza (Beloved)

                       Amal (Hope)

                                   Farrah (Joy)

                                              Asad (Lion)

their silence shields them

for who can know

the slash of shredded limbs

exported from a screen

or the weep of crusting flesh

from what remained

of what remained

   

Nasir (Protector)

                Safiya (Pure)

                               Dahir (Victorious)

                                      Bashir (Bringer of good news)

gathering of the unclaimed

these children of ghosts

exhuming the darkness

for what was lost to them

these ghosts of children

nothing now to own

but our humanity

Habiba (Beloved)
                         Iman (Faith)
                                              Hamid (Praiseworthy)
                                                             Zara (Flower)
                                                                                    Lina (Tender)

Lynda Tavakoli lives in County Down and is a professional member of The Irish Writers Centre. She has won several international poetry awards and been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Lynda’s recent poetry collection ‘A Unison of Breaths’ is published by Arlen House.