Istikhara
by Sagirah Shahid
M. Florine Démosthène, Untitled #4, collage on paper, 11 x 15 inches, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.
Istikhara
SAGIRAH SHAHID / NOV 2020 / ISSUE 3
Potted cups of empty soil, except for African Violets. Now there’s snow. Pressed frost against lone windowpane. A forgotten prayer for guidance. Dua dwindled with whispered wishes. Hidden spinster sprout, sturdies eclipsing memory ritual. Before disappearance, rogue petals rested on burgundy fibers of a childhood prayer rug. Duende niche, sajdah. Unfurled uunsi smoke. Ascension.
Sirens, bullets, nothing cuffs incense’s child
Flowerless African Violets. Notice the fuzzed leaves, defiantly emerald. Along the sill, sabotage
Night sky without scars
If only sunrays would stop twinkling snowfall like that.
Black children build snow
forts beyond my windowpane
focus on their breaths.
Sagirah Shahid is an African American Muslim poet and arts educator from Minneapolis, MN. She is a recipient of a mentor series award in poetry from the Loft Literary Center, a Minnesota Center for Book Arts mentorship award, and Twin Cities Media Alliance’s Our Space is Spoken For, a collaborative public art and performance fellowship for Black, Indigenous and artists of color. In 2019 she was a writer-in-residence for Wisdom Ways, Unrestricted Interest, and 826 MSP. Sagirah’s poetry and prose are published in Mizna, Winter Tangerine, The Drinking Gourd, Puerto Del Sol, the American Muslim Futures virtual exhibit, and A Moment of Silence an online anthology of 50+ Black Minnesotan voices during a historical moment of transformation. Sagirah’s debut collection of poetry “Surveillance of Joy” is forthcoming from Half Mystic Press in 2021.
M. Florine Démosthène was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Florine earned a BFA from Parsons School of Design (New York) and MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has exhibited extensively in group and solo exhibitions in the USA, Caribbean, UK, Europe and Africa. She is the recipient of a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Arts Moves Africa Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She has participated in residencies in the USA, UK, Slovakia, Ghana, and Tanzania. Her work can be seen at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Lowe Museum of Art, PFF Collection of African American Art, and in various private collections worldwide.