Demands
now a surreal residue lives on your hair you
play with in a corridor checking out light
fading smiles a verisimilitude of close hands
evenings spent on waiting chairs creaked
but that decibel silence torn by a stubborn bird
outside on an acacia was an unofficial orgasm
same as one leap from the first stanza to the last
undermining interpretation so a forced kiss clumsy
transition decrease in pep talk another foreplay
huddling for a conclusion telling us never follow
poems to meet out demands bodies put on you.
Rizwan Akhtar’s debut collection of poems, Lahore, I Am Coming (2017), is published by Punjab University Press. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.