Listen—if I’ve learned anything from men,it’s that their tongues are bareand motherless, lapping the breast of brawnthey mistake for a masculine God.
Too young, I’ve earned the word beheadin my mother tongue—
How young? She, named for light, was twenty-seven.My hunger for fresh language carries mecloser to violent shores, gravel voices.
Once before Fajr I cracked a date pit betweenteeth, lilted the sharp half into a lover’s mouth.I tested the crimson I was sure seethed beneathhis, every man’s, skin. You’re like a furnace,he’d whisper, dry against my sweat-laced back.
It’s true I dream of handshot around my throat, the finger marksI saw fading grime-green against [] ’s.No one has blued me, but still I wake afraid,keen until the complex dogs bark back.
How to fathom it, my grandfather alive nowlonger than our new-bloom nation.
meaning pure.Land…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, September/October 2022