From
“Soviet Kush”

Mohammed Zenia

08.30.23

 

 

From Lucy to Lenin

 red child of the horn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mohammed Zenia De La Sofia Bulgaria

 

 
1.
 

I- born under the spiral a of an ocean wall, star on fire,
city in the bedrock of  a sumptuous hearth. The 25th 23rd, 6th, 4th, or 1st- the date of the Nubian’s born after the last empire fell.  galaxy blackness spread shot into the anthropomorphous mass, corpus cranium of the modern nation state, i arias of a nuclear Iron Curtain, like aborted captions or the pause before a profound statement, generation born to either ennui or horror, exile emergency. Strangers even to ourselves, in  emptiness we sing multiple tribes, confederacy to none.

 

 

 

 

2.

 
*

 

This under the surface, of several breaks,

 the earth tries joy simultaneous- bends

                                                              bones too,

death slepted its song over an Orion sky as 88

covered the compass rose like a moon.

 

I of

gold lakes under sleepy mountains that house

Arks from

alien homelands

the blood and soil

of long forgotten kings

who assailed the Gods and fell

                                            in love

with the trash collectors of Mt. Olympus

 

I of several tongues like

a dumb babel

 

I who witnessed the Mahdi,

absent breath and mad, bow furred

brow-ed and humbled to the pebbles

 

All my boasts-

salute to the Camelot Balkans-

a ghost cut into the cleft lip of history

but nonetheless

invisible

 

                              -and so, it is

 

              -Mohammed Zenia-

              orphan angel of the student district of

Sofia

              whom wrote

the bible

 

                            Sanskrit and oil paints

from the vantage point of skyscraper sewage.

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Smell


Mohammed Zenia pushes forward the dead

              sun sways east west + drunk with Abdel Raheems’ imaginary son + wishes the

worlds Bedouins a happy narrative

scraps singular the tied skyscraper union + abolishes

all alphabets with a lazy tongue a possible touched head in

séance birth but maybe it’s just the foreign faint + bad fragrance. Abdel Raheem who

begat Rashid is Mohammed Zenias, one or all the above stinks! So Abdel is dead.

Moved Moscow to mourning by jumping open faced over the moon + accidently

crashing adjacent to the Institute of Languages

RASHID is pen to paper + Mohammed’s synopsis when bored + lonely

 Zenia Siddig Yu Stink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 2nd Sudayni on Earth

(the 1st Sudayni creates a friend)

 

 
1.

 

Shalom

              solemn + measured

over the proud land

shared eucalyptuses pine

savored the waterways

shaped deserts

sing myself two by

four

+ forthwith the temple

stone pyramids of moss + 4 loaded

the range rover AK 47 + all

 

 

2.

 

Abdel Raheem + I string the catastrophic

consonants bind abject birth +

EASTERN BLOC

                                                America makes

US nNIGGAS + small towns

GOSSIPS uphold the thesis

we recreate our cousins

white rooms make you

lonely

                                                ___________

 

Beatitude

breath-

my twin!!

The first Sudani made from a kale rib +                

from his grasslands sang Wardi

              to the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mohammed sings the blues.

 

1.

 

Mohammed Zenia is broke the author of this poem +clearly crazy

Rashed Abdel is tirelessly singing Spinoza to the Sufis of

Omdurman + mourning the Sudani Sophie who fell perestroika depression

89′ Moscow skyline. Ahmed is Mohammed in a mirage 2 bar bathrooms on a drinking binge

veteran of jail cells + the county coroner’s office.

 

 

 

 

2.

 

3 east African poets sit drunk in an Irish barbershop but let’s focus on 2

All 3 suicidal + gay + then; 2 face 1 triangular mirror

-Sudan Eritrea + Russia like pearl stones or future tablets transcribing genocide

Mohammed Zenia stretched arms over the southwest while Rashid Abdel pondered his dead father

Sudani Zuami messianic recollections of the Danube + Nietzsche’s cruel symmetry

broke windows in Moscow’s clarion moon +

my own dead father Sofia’s graveyard 4 the Turkish invaders. Eritrean

Gannibal argues geometric Aztecs with Pascal under the Marque of bastilles psych ward

gray doors circling back to the confused Caucasian who hate niggers + jews in equal measure anyways; vaguely aware exile will be the burden of 3 countries and  a million sons to bear.

 

 

 

 

3.

 

And where is Ahmed,

              Now that

                                apostate 

nightmare of the state psychiatric hospitals

have fallen

                                cataract

tongue-less

2            covid?

              Pray beads on the crown

of Slauson Avenue

reciting the Agnaw liturgy facing

eastern wall barbed wire +

russian Tel Aviv

Is trying to remove

tiffany Haddish from the hebasha nation

despite N. American Contingents complaints

but they don’t want me either

 

              (and even with Common in line)

 

              is starving in Tigray

slowly going

blind like a hunch back Mahdi or Black Moses stricken pestilence

MEMPHIS TENNESSEE

 

credit card scamming Rome like

a negro Nero  written by Pasolini’s

pillow talk to Mario Mielli

capsized Gibraltar

wound up Romanian concentration

camp wintered

 

there R nazis lept kamoron 4 Kierkegaard 

over the 201stcentury SPELT

                                          Pixels + GUN

 

but

never an end to adventures + tunicates

              till we burn all

The                                                                                                             books.



Sudanese poet Mohammed Zenia is the author of the books Tel Aviv (Porosity Press, 2020) and James Baldwin’s Lungs in the 80s (Chat Rooms, 2023). Their work has also appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter as well as E-flux. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, they now reside in New York.

From
The Grid

Changes Review

Eli Payne Mandel

PARABLE
&
OBVERSE

Changes Review

Mónica de la Torre

From NOMINAL DISPATCH

Changes Review

S*an D. Henry-Smith