I Am Not a Literary Wife
—for Sumra
I spill seeds
watch them
sprout
my trinket children
pull lobes
breasts choose
to be pendulous
after years
pinched metaphors
in closets and on sheets
of orgasmic upheaval
when afterwards you scribble
under an obsessive shade
of a yellow lamp
fingering hairs
I tuck pillows’ case
a part-time muse
substantiate a make-shift smile
a line or a word
fixes me
while a lonely dog cracks
the silence of night providing you
the major inspiration deviating
from my arms
odd embraces
vicarious extensions
stains on pages
you call poems
for God’s sake
I am not over.
by Rizwan Akhtar
from Lahore, I Am Coming
Punjab University Press, 2017