Rizwan Akhtar, Lahore, Pakistan
crying in the middle of night
want an early dawn, clamor
against the sky to vacate
darkness from leaves, bloated
trunks, rinds of barks, shreds
of bottles thrown out like words
from cars adding to their litanies;
loosing feathers they scuffle in
nests, negotiate the best perch
for a morning still embryonic
and saber sounds with beaks
uproot the system of silence
reserved for nights, nudge
a language creeping on ears.
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 from the UK, US, India, Canada and New Zealand. He was part of a poetry workshop with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.