NAZIFA ISLAM

Before the Wave
        a found poem: Virginia Woolf's The Waves

I float on a raft green with creepers
my freedom gone.

I drop brown petals and hollyhocks and a stone
into the icy waves.
The gale barks.

The waves rise and curl. Ships dash
against the cliffs
and the sea is red. A drowning sailor

reaches for the shore—
bubbles rise from the depths.

I rock side to side. My time is short.
I see the fallen lighthouse.
I have foundered.

Other People
        a found poem: Virginia Woolf's The Waves

My face is heavy and angry
in the looking-glass—

people are laughing at it.
I duck and hide but I am seen

in a second. They say
they really know me.

They say I shift and change
when spoken to.

They are really here
but am I?

I look to the world
for what is real.

It laughs.

In the Schoolroom
        a found poem: Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Her body is thyme and chalk
her mind a white emptiness.
A butterfly circles her as she stares
at the blackboard
and pinching fear lodges in her back
in her shoulder-blades.
She has no story, no meaning
here. She has no wings.

Remorselessly
        a found poem: Virginia Woolf's The Waves

A terrible night—
the soundless dark
palpitating

shadow catching
on my flanks and fear moving
through me.

I am like a trembling
young animal.
I cower.

I hear the sigh
of the churning dead
and run.

I prepare to fall.
I seek some shelter
but I am

whimpering
in vain—
no one is coming.

Where They Sat
        a found poem: Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

He left her years ago. He had expressed
being with her as unending suffering

so his coming back
in this moment is puzzling

and her voice is not laden with honey.
He had been her future.

He was delight itself.
A reluctant intimacy—in recollection

of the past—glides into her heart
yet she wants him gone. He was the one

she remembered
when the clock tolled the hour.

She had been extraordinarily happy.
Her grief is alive.

Nazifa Islam grew up in Novi, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Believer, and Beloit Poetry Journal among other publications, and her poetry collection Searching for a Pulse (2013) was released by Whitepoint Press. She earned her MFA at Oregon State University. You can find her @nafoopal.