Cover art: Graffiti depicting Ghulam Nafiz’s body on the rickshaw.
You’re Dead
I’m still alive mutters the man on the van
A constable avers You’re dead
The argument keeps on quite a while
At some point he assays to yell
Gathering some strength but to no avail
Now he gestures to drink water
Moving the right hand onto his mouth
The man in uniform frowns
As if he were waiting for him to succumb
He can land a last strike to ensure
The last breath but he waits
Indeed he waits for the wounded to expire
Here’s a dilemma, the human dilemma
Coursing through an unseen artery
Of complicated neural systems
It’s already late, the officer orders
To pile the bodies on the van
In response to the call of service
The constable forgets the man still breathing
Two men in uniform hurl him out
Onto the mass of motionless bodies
Within seconds the van burns
The flames cry out A young man’s heart
Still throbs, he still breathes
The world witnesses a man being burnt alive
Mohammad Shafiqul Islam is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Inner State, and the translator of, among others, The Glorious Afternoon, Humayun Ahmed: Selected Short Stories and Aphorisms of Humayun Azad. His work has appeared in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Critical Survey, Massachusetts Review, Poem: International English Language Quarterly, Journal of World Literature, South Asian Review, English in Education, Scrutiny2, Psychological Perspectives, Journal of Poetry Therapy, English: Journal of the English Association, Modern Poetry in Translation, Five Points, Comparative Literature: East & West, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, Forum for World Literature Studies, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Dibur, Vittles, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in a number of books, including The Book of Dhaka: A City in Short Fiction, The Best Asian Poetry, Poems from SAARC Region, When the Mango Tree Blossomed, An Ekushey Anthology 1952-2022, Of the Nation Born, Meet Human Meat and Other Stories, and Monsoon Letters: Collection of Poems. Currently at work on his third collection of poetry and a few translation projects, Dr Islam is Professor of English at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh.
