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Dreams of dispossession



In my dreams, 
sandwiched between forbidden loves
And incestuous wars, 

I dream of dispossession

Of cold posters plastered over my home,
Declaring me a fugitive of exile,

Of rusted rifles guarding empty hearths
waiting for new occupants, 
who arrive in shuttered buses 
holding papers 
dipped in 
cold black ink 
confirming peace

Of the old occupants, 
all that remains are old books and 
memories razed and blotted by pressed blood

--

In time, I will be an Iberian Jew
Cast-out and doomed to roam
The earth, till one day when I
Too shall cut open the last stitches holding
Me together and drive others to exile

They say when Azra’il comes
For the sinner’s soul, he rips it apart
Like Muslin drawn through a rose-thorn bush
--
Let me bargain with death tonight
And desecrate its oblivion
To conjure a map of home
From the memories of my ancestors
From my grandfather, who died too young
From his father, who sits turbaned in the family album
From his father who lived at the bottom of a hill
All the way before nine syllables were spoken
And gods were found in polished stones
--

I have always been envious of people
Who can commit to being inked
Even when it is misspelt Chinese alphabets
Or barely understood Latin phrases
People who can commit to other languages
They barely speak or understand
Offering strangers glimpses into their souls,
The spaces between their bare pentagrams,
summoning non-existent demons,
to exorcise old wounds through the
Tyranny of ink
-

I try escaping from the dream
And she pins it down its hem  
Under her stilettoes
As it unfurls in front of me
Like a winter morning fog over the Dal

--



Tz






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