{"id":257482,"date":"2023-12-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=257482"},"modified":"2023-11-22T12:47:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T17:47:55","slug":"two-poems-by-hussain-ahmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/two-poems-by-hussain-ahmed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moon Has Always Been an Alien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Alien<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Once, this stable hosted  \ntens of thoroughbreds.\n\nBut this ranch has a history \nof lost riders\n\nand now, there is\nnothing else to ride.\n\nSet free by forgetfulness \nrather than truth,\n\nI am comfortable \nwith my beliefs of the unseen.\n\nUnder the night sky, \nscars become spider veins\u2014\n\nlike an atom\nblurred for naked eyes.\n\nThere is migration \nanytime the sun coils \n\ninto its cotton shell \nor when the ground cracks, \n\nbecause it thirsts for rain. \n\nStalactites hang \ndown the roof of a cave \n\nwhere shadows \neclipsed the hieroglyphs.\n\nBefore the storm, \nsharks fled their nurseries  \n\nfor the abyssopelagic zone, where \nthe moon has always been an alien.\n\n\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Light<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\"><em>\u2014\twith a line from Kahf or the Cave<\/em>\nAs the sea rises, it absorbs lights \nfrom the sky in packets.\n\nA spider tents a web bridge \nacross the well of oyster shells.\n\nInside the mirror are reflections \nof cities on water.\n\nThe window glasses in this house \nare old as toothed edges of cowries \n\non the sea floor. A fisherman returned \nafter a storm. In the past, disciples  \n\nof this blue water sat on the beach \nwith lungs filled with hot air, \n\n&amp; thirsty for their wounds to be healed. \nOmi o ni ota, omi ni \u00ecw\u00f2s\u00e0n ohun gbogbo.\n\nThough we name what we can neither inherit \nnor mourn, man has never been most of anything.\n\nThe eye was cave enough to be a museum\nfor beams of wandering blue lights, \n\nuntil they vanished before it rained.  \nThe storm blew octopuses to the beach.\n\nIf the water breaks through, walk\ninto the fog until you touch the water, \n\nA smoke from a burnfire\ndilates the cave\u2019s entrances, \n\nhungered with grief, a new moon \nwas sighted in a jar of salt water.\n\n\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alien Once, this stable hosted tens of thoroughbreds. But this ranch has a history of lost riders and now, there is nothing else to ride. Set free by forgetfulness rather than truth, I am comfortable with my beliefs of the unseen. Under the night sky, scars become spider veins\u2014 like an atom blurred for naked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6267,"featured_media":257553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5557,5966,5561],"tags":[205,175,5655],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Moon Has Always Been an Alien - Electric Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two poems by Hussain Ahmed\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/two-poems-by-hussain-ahmed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Moon Has Always Been an Alien - 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