The Emperor Pats His Lips with a Napkin
Given that you are the object
of the emperor’s touch; given that you object
to his learnt repetition of love; given the abject
shame of a body entered by another body’s object
permanence; given shame’s objective;
given your maiden name and the object
of the game: may everybody know, but nobody object—
the emperor is your maker. And you—his subject
of rule—have tried to say it true, only to be subjected
to a cruel inheritance in which memory is the subject
of a sentence the mind cannot objectify
long enough to hold, but holds true enough to subject
all touch to this kingdom of touching, this abject
poverty of care dressed as care itself—you slept, objectively,
in your emperor’s bed. The rest is subjective,
but it was no rest.
Copyright © 2026 by Sanam Sheriff. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 26, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Poetry has many powers. One of them, for me, is the boundary’s ability to usher us into a certain kind of freedom—the way the lines and limits of a basketball court make the game possible. While writing this poem, I came up with the constraint of ending each line with renditions of object and subject, given that these words had been circling my mind with gravity’s pull and flight’s distance. Working with this boundary as a steady outline helped me fill in the face of what I was trying to see. So here I am, facing it.”
—Sanam Sheriff
Sanam Sheriff
