River In My Mouth Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

There is a river in my mouth
full of dragons. Bellicose, dirty and filthy.
There is reverberation, of sounding
corrosive metal rings, smashing skulls
of the young girls. There is utopia,
from the court culture, selling little
girls, as concubines. The holy text allows.
‘We will marry them out or sell them
in the market’. Or their limbs
scattered in the bush. There is a victim.
They pick their teeth with big thorn-like
sticks. And belch a putrid cadaveric
stench. The others are hanging to the
trees. Their buffalo skins hidden
behind bunch of leaves.
The mothers have stopped crying,
Their tears stream to the river in my mouth.

-On the abduction of school girls,276 in number by militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
May 13,2014.

Image @ CA-News