three girls ago
bloodroot: it was Eid
Al-Adha: a man

I loved shoved
my face into
German reeds

I can still feel his sweat
when I unsleep: the cleave
of his breath-lice

warming chains
of my necklace
I was without people

oh so summerful
I invented my girlhood
I languaged myself

a knife-body
yet all uncles said
I’m badly woven: bad

muslin: say forgiveness
comes easy say freckledirt
buried the faces

of my sisters: lakewarm
& plentiful—
we kiss we touch

we Magdalene each
other it’s true
during the adhan I pulled

down my tights
nylon black like the chador
of my mother

I licked from my yesterlove
the salt licked
real good—to pluck it again

I must whorl ad nauseam
for the addendum
of flesh the soft

sumac, cottonwood hard
as the nipples
he circled

we are singing
it’s spring and God to my song
is unlistening, unlistening

o Maryam o Miriam
o Mary we are undying
we are not gone

are not slayed we are
unslaying—our hand
wields this life

and I ply myself
out come here
between my legs     

come in          all are welcome        who believe

Allah, you gave us a language
where yesterday & tomorrow
are the same word. Kal.

A spell cast with the entire
mouth. Back of the throat
to teeth. Tomorrow means I might

have her forever. Yesterday means
I say goodbye, again.
Kal means they are the same.

I know you can bend time.
I am merely asking for what
is mine. Give me my mother for no

other reason than I deserve her.
If yesterday & tomorrow are the same
pluck the flower of my mother’s body

from the soil. Kal means I’m in the crib,
eyelashes wet as she looks over me.
Kal means I’m on the bed,

crawling away from her, my father
back from work. Kal means she’s
dancing at my wedding not-yet come.

Kal means she’s oiling my hair
before the first day of school. Kal
means I wake to her strange voice

in the kitchen. Kal means
she’s holding my unborn baby
in her arms, helping me pick a name.

I've been fighting a War Within Myself all my life,
Tired of the hurt, the pain, the strife.
Anger consumes me from day to day,
Cellies now walking on eggshells, unsure of what to say.
I do pray each night for the peace that I need in my heart,
I need it before I tear what friendships I have apart.
Prison has a funny way of doing some things,
Leaves me wondering what tomorrow may bring.
I'm tired of the hate, anger and pain that I feel,
I just want my heart and soul to be healed.
I want to be able to simply laugh at a joke,
I need someone to help me before I lose all hope.
My heart is almost completely hardened with what I've been through,
I need someone, anyone, maybe that someone is you.
I'm fighting a War Within Myself, and I'm so tired,
So nervous, scared, like I'm on a high tight wire.
I hope that I don't fall before someone catches me,
But then again... maybe it's my destiny.

and again the test comes back negative for waterborne parasites
for gonorrhea of the throat and of elsewhere       for white blood cells in the stool

this isn’t always true       sometimes it’s a phone call from your lover
sometimes it’s your computer blinking on with news of what’s wrong
              with your body    this time

simple really       how he says the name of a disease
and suddenly you’re on your back           staring out the window onto a highway

suddenly a woman enters the room       to wrap a black cuff around your arm
and squeeze until you’re no longer sick

to slip a device under your tongue       check in your sweat’s accompanied
by the heat it demanded

and aren’t we all of elsewhere sometimes     the nowhere places you make yourself
inside the hallowed chambers of the hospital    and inside the man’s unsure voice

when he calls and is too scared to name the precise strain of letters
you might share now       what parasite might feed on the topsoil of your groin

what laugh track                   what tabernacle unlatched to let all that god in
what bacteria spreading its legs in your throat      as you speak

when the illness is terminal            you drink an eighth of paint thinner
while all the color drains from your face

all those little rocks in your gut turned to buses    all those buses full of strange men
each     one degree apart        all going somewhere and gone now

funny how a word can do that       garage the body

what if instead he’d simply called to say     epithalamium    or new car    or   sorry

When I tell it, the first time
I saw hail, I say
it was in a desert and knocked
 
a man unconscious
then drove a woman into my arms
because she thought the end was near
 
but I assured her
this wasn’t the case.
 
When he tells it,
he smiles, says the first winter
after their exodus
was the coldest.
 
Rare snow
came down, and his mother,
who knew what the fluff was
 
but until then had never seen it,
woke him and said, Look outside,
what do you see?
 
She called his name twice.
It was dark. Snow fell
a paragraph to sum up
 
decades of heat. He had
no answer. She said,
this is flour from heaven.
 
When he tells it,
he’s an old man returning
to his mother.

I worry that my friends 
will misunderstand my silence

as a lack of love, or interest, instead
of a tent city built for my own mind,  

I worry I can no longer pretend 
enough to get through another

year of pretending I know 
that I understand time, though 

I can see my own hands; sometimes, 
I worry over how to dress in a world 

where a white woman wearing 
a scarf over her head is assumed 

to be cold, whereas with my head 
cloaked, I am an immediate symbol 

of a war folks have been fighting 
eons-deep before I was born, a meteor.  

on my block, a gate
on my block, a tree smelling

of citrus & jasmine that knocks
me back into the arms of my dead

mother. i ask Ross how can a tree
be both jasmine & orange, on my block

my neighbors put up gates & stare
don’t like to share, on my block

a tree I can’t see, but can smell
a tree that can’t be both but is

on my block, my mother’s skirt twirls
& all i smell is her ghost, perfume

on my block, a fallen orange
smashed into sidewalk

it’s blood pulped on asphalt on my
block, Jordan hands me a jasmine

by the time i get home
all its petals are gone

Friends describe my DISPOSITION

as stoic. Like a dead fish, an ex said. DISTANCE

is a funny drug and used to make me a DISTRESSED PERSON,

one who cried in bedrooms and airports. Once I bawled so hard at the border, even the man with the stamps and holster said Don’t cry. You’ll be home soon. My DISTRIBUTION

over the globe debated and set to quota. A nation can only handle so many of me. DITCHING

class, I break into my friend’s dad’s mansion and swim in the Beverly Hills pool in a borrowed T-shirt. A brief DIVERSION.

My body breaking the chlorinated surface makes it, momentarily, my house, my DIVISION

of driveway gate and alarm codes, my dress-rehearsed DOCTRINE

of pool boys and ping pong and water delivered on the backs of sequined Sparkletts trucks. Over here, DOLLY,

an agent will call out, then pat the hair at your hot black DOME.

After explaining what she will touch, backs of the hands at the breasts and buttocks, the hand goes inside my waistband and my heart goes DORMANT.

A dead fish. The last female assist I decided to hit on. My life in the American Dream is a DOWNGRADE,

a mere DRAFT

of home. Correction: it satisfies as DRAG.

It is, snarling, what I carve of it alone.