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a girl dances and i think about how she eats her fingernails for lunch
and they grow back just in time for dinner. and after dinner she can paint meticulous black boundaries on them, only to be chewed off throughout the night. and as the nocturnal creatures march out with their neon halter necks and shivering legs, she is permitted to join their ranks. she shoots straight; asks about your job and tells you what she’s studying and doesn’t ask you to take your hand off her thigh and doesn’t tell you what she’s really doing here. she goes AWOL when her eyes start pushing back into her skull. vomits in the alleyway. one final salute and the taxi driver pulls in. home. sleep. get some rest. big night tomorrow! what dingy wonders
have cramped this chambered organ, a billowing, dust-caked black, for the dear widow’s heart gave out much too soon : Be cute
Don’t cry Keep quiet Do as you’re told Grow up Don’t be shy Make them proud Work hard Dodge bullies Pass exams Best days of Your life. Get a degree Don’t sleep around Find a job Look pretty Get promoted Save money Get a house Keep in touch Find yourself But not in a bottle. when I was young I played
with my plastic pink palace constructing a monarchy, and a class system at five, determining who would have the pretty bedroom with the window who would be a princess who would cook, with barefoot plastic feet in a small fake kitchen near tiny plastic rats The female dolls wore dresses that snapped off their bodies revealing clothes less pretty and poofy, I married them off to possessive plastic men who fought wars for the king I had a playset with a carriage and white horses, the driver came holding a plastic whip as a little girl,
i went to lick the sugar drip of every blue vein. born from satin swirls & 7-eleven cigs the scent of strangers – lure & mist, fills me through a filter. the ladies in the band; i wore guitar pick necklaces & sang bob dylan for a week. I was more gloomy than ever. As the house got closer to my steps, the warmth slapped on my face, a
slap exactly like the one of the man whose beard is black and white, like our TV and like my shoes and like me and my black and white life. At the same time that his fingers imprinted my broken pride mixed with happiness and shame as a five-finger image on my cheek, I was a light year away from happiness. I absorbed the grief, or no, the grief was absorbing me. What does it matter, whether I absorb it or it absorbs me, I was the loser and that’s it. Grief followed me all over Mustofiat to Sufi Abad, as if I had killed its lover, or was in debt to it. It was following me, I could feel it struggling until suddenly, with its own permission and not mine, grief left my eyes, turned on my cheeks, rolled itself over my cheeks, lower and lower, so my mouth became salty and life became colorless as death. Through the capillaries to my heart it spread like a corona deep into my being. Grief made me cough so much that tears reached my nose and started pouring out my eyes like Niagara Falls. I didn’t want grief to be spectacular, and for this I raised my head. With the collision of my eyes and her hair, fear jumped in me again and more stones were thrown at my feet, which were more tired than ever. With a movement and a sound that I can’t write, I lifted my nose, my mouth was no longer salty, and I could see better. I looked at her hair, her laugh and her beautiful and troublesome gown with a pity that I had never felt before. I was sorry for her and even more so, she reminded me again why, how, where, and from whom I had recived that slap. I still didn’t know which bridge my laughter, my dress, and my enthusiasm had destroyed, which root has dried up in which corner of history, in which house had decomposed God’s brain? Was my freedom the reason for painting schools and library walls with the blood of books and students? Were girls really the ones who exploded everything in Afghanistan? I really didn’t know what my loud laughter did wrong that I didn’t know about myself. If I knew what I had done I would have punished myself. I thought a thought and asked myself why these words are my right and why does God hate me and think that I am shameless or his enemy? Was what those pious men (the Taliban) say was correct? After all, I was laughing with God! I really wanted God to believe it. I painted my lips like the pomegranates of our village garden, because the tall mirror in our house said I was prettier that way and I always wanted and I didn’t want to be prettier! They tell me to be at peace.
They don’t notice that I am in pieces. Regardless of the blood that drips from my lips. Regardless of the bruises that shackle my wrists. They wrestle control from bloodied fingers, and crack my knees against the floor. They wish to strip me of my strength, and trap me in my voice. They wish for me to cease, gagging me with dirtied money. They think it will stop me, stuffed mouth unable to speak. Is my womb crying out in pain because a month has gone by
with another egg unfertilized or is it echoing the maenad lament across the country, grief-stricken, hair matted, bloodied from a war waged and lost. Part I (Yours)
Each time you lead me to the box, I get in: Willingly, even gratefully. I close my eyes and hear the locks click. The room begins to spin. I wait. But you just shrug, And drop your hacksaw to the floor, Then walk offstage-- Your arm around the latest bunny Pulled from your hat-- As I beg you: Either let me out, Or pick up that saw and finish the job. Coward! for thirty years,
i’ve noticed a ritual around the fine silk nightgowns i fold with precision and the sullied, red fevers of blood moons three times a year now, i let myself slip from the sick air of sleeping children and fall silent – a lost pilgrim swallowed by night, choking on lilacs |