by Huma Dar
for my N, Z, many Shahids, and the One
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.
—Agha Shahid Ali, “Stationery”
(I)
The tilted goblet drips
mocking
Pacific amber:
liquid lunatic luminous.
And makes a slippery mess
of Highway 1
the night
memory and desire —
relentless, ebon, a plumbless
dream of falling.
Like tresses distraught
entwining your imagined arm
(make the bleeding black night
all yours)
your aching memories knotted in my gut
my exiled ghost lost, found
and willfully entangled
again
in the lines of your words
your stone-cold feet in my shaalfa —
an ablution performed in blood.
P U L S E 