Do Not Eat My Grassy Flesh

Buttonhole scissors in hands
snipping on the tip of the leaves
Like a barber with a thinning shear
behind a man on a revolving chair.
Pruning the sepals in the flower base.
Chopping off little stems. Thinly
grown trunk ready to fall upon the grave.
Groaning. An agonizing voice heard.
Do not eat my grassy flesh. my amber
blood. Do not eat my green heart.
Surprised leaves and little buds with
coloration. Fluttered to the ground.
Decamped butterflies flying. Drenched
with rain. The oozing sap from the
root. Tears from the parted rhizome

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J Alam came to the US in Fall 2018 from Bangladesh and is an English PhD Candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His poems speak of his political sensitivity about things around him and his inalienable diasporic crisis of living in the US.