On The Difficulty Of Documentation (audio only)
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Beatitudes
1.
My child wants to know if the mountains really cowered.
“How do you know when a sea or a river is afraid?
How do you know when the sky is thinking yes or no?
And why did Adam say yes—Did he know that
all the other creatures refused? Was he arrogant
or just ignorant? Was he God’s last choice?”
2.
“Did you really have a party the day the dictator died?
2019
Shikwah
After Iqbal
Brother on the threshing floor, body like wheat,
and the red dirt that binds us, that nothing will release us
from. The fig tree, the date palm, the treacherous murder
2019
Ali! Ali!
It’s late and your heart skips watching
that young man fight. The Garden, the left
jab lashes like a frog’s tongue catching
a fly. There you go again with an undeft
image to his arthropod conceit. You know he’ll win,
an old victory. They hate him there, sore
that he joined your faith, a strapping boy, skin
hairless almost feminine. He’d kept you up before,
2016