A South Sudanese

Saddiq Dzukogi

And yours is the hands of wind. Pleasure come and go, but dreams, dreams stay. I think of these words for some reason as I chase the shot. A black boy stick in hands poking into a puddle that has formed on the icesheet like some irritant wound. The sun, bright overhead aligned shooting rays that fall symmetrically on him. I do not have the language to replicate the surge of joy and anticipation on the page. Only my body remembers. The warmth on my skin was reminiscent of the sun’s and I cannot force my mind recollect that thrill on the page. It is greedy, and even with much cajoling has opted to keep that sweetness trapped in the sack, the place where the soul perhaps resides. Somethings are sweeter when they remain unspoken, untranslatable.

Photographer Bio

Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet, photographer and assistant professor of English at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (Nebraska, 2021), winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Julie Suk Award and shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, Guernica Magazine, Poetry London, Best American Experimental Writing Anthology, and Cincinnati Review. He has received fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council, Mississippi Arts Commission, and Cave Canem.