Critique of My Thighs
—after Lucille Clifton
on the platform i pray
i don’t have to wait too long
for the next train—my girth
too loud, disruptive
for this crowd,
in the elevator i make myself
small, recall Nani’s final days
how my aunt
dressed her after a shower
that memory her skin on bones
follows me everywhere
how she was only slightly there,
but for those family heirloom hips
those dominant gene thighs
i wish i was proud of this pear
that follows me everywhere
of what abundance
adorns this temple
and wrote for it an homage
and not a lament
Copyright © 2025 by Fatima Malik. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 11, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I have been preoccupied with genealogies, biological and otherwise, for so long. My ignorance and inability to access some of the literature in my native tongues used to make me feel rootless. In time, I learned that you can trace lineages in unlikely places: I can now say that I consider Clifton a foremother and an interlocutor. What a gift. Here, I seek to emulate the style and further the conversation in ‘homage to my hips.’ I am especially fortunate that a couple of key linkages crisscross in this poem; that it, and I, find belonging in more than one tradition.”
—Fatima Malik
Fatima Malik
Fatima Malik is a Pakistani writer and translator. She serves on the board of Teachers & Writers Collaborative and lives in Brooklyn, New York, on Munsee Lenape land.