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
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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