Abdulkareem Abdulkareem: How I Wrote ‘August Third’

Interview by Zoë Brigley

“This poem is one of the few poems I knew I would write someday, I’ve wanted to write it even before I wrote it.”

August Third

I let this day wash over me like a river of hot & cold,
edging each other & not merging. Say, my body
is the landscape withholding the clash of waters on
its chest. & when I say it unfurls like a laughter-ridden
mouth with long jutting canines.
I mean; everything comes as a two edged blade.
The paternal; celestial as a comet, life-wrenching
as a lava & faceless as my father's name in my thoughts.
The maternal flip side—weightless with grief,
a pothole-free tarred surface, & a hallway sprinkled
with confetti. On days like this, I billow between the
spiky tongue of a cactus & Stevie Wonder's
happy birthday song. My father's music, a dead one.
My mother's song, like a hand unfettering the night
undoing sleep from my eyeballs. But I carry a monolith,
& I'm drunk with anguish. Mother said my father
promised her big candles, & a birthday
empty of a lifelong ache while he laid on the
hospital bed, but some promises are birds without wings,
On this day, I don't know what my lips taste of;
but there is a foundry melting the delight on my chest.

There is some gorgeous lyrical writing here. Which writers influence you in this sense of lyricism?

When it comes to seeking lyrics in poetry, I read a variety of poets. But my biggest influences have been Kaveh Akbar, Safia Elhillo, and Ocean Vuong. They have been, and are still my influences when it comes to lyrical writing. Kaveh Akbar makes metaphors in a so rhythmic way in which the works move in a consistent cascade and jarring too. Jared Mohr-Leiva described Ocean Vuong’s writing as an “expert use of metaphor allows each poem to slide seamlessly into the next,” Vuong’s writing is a big time influence to my sense of lyricism. And Safia, I deeply enjoy the visual effects of her works, and how she employs the usage of spaces in place of punctuations, and her form of lineation. All these writing styles are the big influences to my writing. I read a variety of other poets too like Jericho Brown, Patricia Smith, Franny Choi, Romeo Oriogun, Saddiq Dzukogi, Adedayo Agarau, Nome Emeka Patrick, O-jeremiah Agbaakin and more.

I love crafted line-breaks and I enjoyed yours as they work really well with this long rectangle of a poem. How do you go about deciding on your line-breaks?

Deciding on my usage of line-breaks for a poem can be a tedious work for me at times, and sometimes, it’s usually easier. As the poem comes to me, I decide immediately on what shape or line-breaks the poem would make use of. That’s because when I get inspirations, the poem forms a certain shape in my head which automatically becomes the line-breaks to use. But since it’s a draft, I usually go on to change the method of line-breaks a couple of times. And sometimes, I only perfect the line-breaks as it was from the draft. But then, the sound, syntax, and rhythm determines if I’ll alter a line-break or I won’t. It’s not a constricted method for me. It’s a really flexible method.

Parents loom large in this poem, and they seem both mythical and mundane. Was this intentional or did it just happen in the writing of the poem?

It was intentional to manoeuver through the mythical and the mundane as you described. This poem is one of the few poems I knew I would write someday, I’ve wanted to write it even before I wrote it. So I waited for the right time. That’s because of how significant this date is in my parents’ life. This date signifies birth and death in their lives. Which means to celebrate a parent’s birthday and a parent’s death on the same day. It’s a day where I have to hold on to two opposite sides of life. So, the poem was birthed out of this.