THE HIDDEN REGISTER OF HUNGER

(Selfish)

to touch the swan-soft aperture
between a sleeping baby's
shoulder blades,

(common)

like dirt-new graves, like the seams
of stockings we skim
our hands down the length of,

searching for the memory
of the first ancient feeling
we ever had. It's easy

(hollow)

to laugh in bed with a new lover
at the same joke, and know
energy always precedes

matter, but here's craving anyway
in my begging body, fat
with powdered milk.

Why angel before serpent,
why plucked rib before desire?
Here, I hold both ends

of my spine. There, pickled mango spoons

(greed)

into a clay bowl for our pleasure. O, these daily
rituals we believe we are owed.
O, arrogant, tongue-slung,

costume-replete closets
of our lives in which we assume

(time)

will still be there, a bare lightbulb
burning. Memory pours starfish into the sky
for us to imagine, and still

we burn. O, tendons of our unbearable
master plans. O, maa, maa, maa.
If we're going to use knives,

then we should learn how to carve

(flesh)

by whittling our false gods from stone.


SELF-PORTRAIT AS MANGO

She says, Your English is great! How long have you been in our
  country?
I say, Suck on a mango, bitch, since that's all you think I eat
  anyway. Mangoes

are what margins like me know everything about, right?
  Doesn't
a mango just win spelling bees and kiss white boys? Isn't a
  mango

a placeholder in a poem folded with burkas? But this one,
the one I'm going to slice and serve down her throat, is a
  mango

that remembers jungles jagged with insects, the river's
  darker thirst.
This mango was cut down by a scythe that beheads
  soldiers, mango

that taunts and suns itself into a hard-palmed fist only a
  few months
per year, fattens while blood stains green ponds. Why use a
  mango

to beat her perplexed' Why not a coconut' Because this
  'exotic' fruit
won't be cracked open to reveal whiteness to you. This
  mango

isn't alien just because of its gold-green bloodline. I know
I'm worth waiting for. I want to be kneaded for ripeness.
  Mango:

my own sunset-skinned heart waiting to be held and
  peeled, mango
I suck open with teeth. Tappai! This is the only way to eat a
  mango.


ACOLYTE

The white cross pales
further still,
    nailed arms
watchful as window-light

furls over the backs
of our knees,
    as lavender shadows
cut off our little

necks. I am an infidel
in this classroom
    church. I kneel with
the other, restless

on the cracked leather
kneeler. I crave these
    pillars of candle.
My mouth is avid; it

sings fidelis, fidelis.
My maa is in her
    kitchen crooning
black-and-white film

songs that curl her
hennaed fingers
    around the rolling pin's
heavy back and forth.

My baba leans forward
in his chair, the Qur'an
    open to the last
page, the dark words

blurring as his eyes close
to reconcile again the shapla-
    shaped epitaph
on his father's tombstone.

With my head bowed,
I whisper, 'Amar naam
    Tarfia,' until it is
a prayer that grows.

I help stack the hymnals
higher; I cup the candle
    away. I cry out, 'Bismillah!'
before I disrobe.


YOUR OWN COUNTRY

... that wasn't the same day two towers staggered into the
ground. You were warned they'd be hunting us. But you
didn't want to be soft. There's a first day you learn a
country can't be earned. Your heart's embarrassed eesh-oof.
It is soft. It isn't soft at all. A shiny pickup drives past.
Go back to your own country! they holler. A firecracker,
lit then thrown. There's a first day you learn ours and
theirs. The girl with curious fingers says hello.
Her friend's scorn. You'll get whatever they have! The
skylight pours down all that white at home. What about the
poor people in our country? Do you want to be like them? Is
that it? Then go. Go. There's a first day you learn how to
kill yourself without dying. Your own country demands it. It
isn't new. It isn't news.


THE SACRIFICE

— Qurbani Eid

No, I said. I want
to watch them behead
the goat
      with the men.
Her eyes glistened
as the scythe sang
down
      her neck
and spine. I'm proud
of you, the uncles said. It is
important
      to observe
death. Her hoof, cleaved
from her shin. Her belly.
Everywhere
      I looked
was trickling ant-shadow.
Pleasant banter. Her blood.
The aunts
      came out
to slide the chopped acres
of her into hissing oil
and onion.
      She was
steam-soft and spice-bold.
I ate her between my cousins,
licked
      my palm across
the blood-gravy of what was left
on the filigreed china. Yes,
I savored
      her more than
once: first with rice, then with
chutney. My first death. I felt
curious,
      conflicted. Satisfied.


IV AND MAKE-UP HOMEWORK

How was your summer vacation?
There was an accident, then shoulder bone
      shatter. There was an accident
and then an operation
    and then another operation
      and then another knifing after.

What's one thing you learned this summer?
The only way to test
      for nerve damage is to pierce
each one with a needle; in
      and out of my limp arm, the thread-thin
stainless steel purls. Across me, so many
      small holes.

What are your plans today?

Mornings begin anyway.
    Another vein in my left hand opens for the IV.
      My hand is a snail-curled
      fist; no one look!
      To atrophy.


List at least three books you read this summer.

I pry open the closet door at night with A Wrinkle in Time
  and a penlight.
Zev, Abraham, and Isaac.
I pry open phonebooks and recite the names of strangers.
I pry one finger from my fist to drag under lines of black-finned
  Arabic.
The doctor pries open with latex gloves the dank wound.
The doctor packs gauze into the dark wound.
My medical record.

What's your favorite color?
Dark smudge. Unerasable, left on homework I wake each
morning to finish at the old dining-room table.


Look up the definition of a word you learned this summer.

infection (n): corrupted, corroded, or adulterated
condition, an adulterating substance, an impurity, moral
contamination; corruption of character or habits
by evil influences; an instance of this, communication
of bad or harmful beliefs or opinions; an instance of
this, the communication of a feeling or quality from
one person to another through example or contact; an
instance of this; disease; an epidemic, the condition
produced by this; the corruption of faith; an instance
of this, an instance of this, this instance,
this this

Describe your current situation.

Attached to me, this new limb:
    the bag of antibiotics on its metal stand
near to bursting. My needle-pierced
      hand, the tape too tight,
corrupt and unclean, morbid: words
      in a file with my name.
You will want to remember this suffering later.
    A picture.

What else did you learn this summer?

I learned to write my name with both hands,
      to pile rice into a fort with a fork;
I learned matter and energy are the same thing,
      to look away when the shutter clicks closed.


WEST TEXAS NOCTURNE

Because the sky burned, I had to unhinge
from the window the mesh screen
to step out onto the roof where the world was
an orange freshly peeled. I held

to my nose fingertips scented with spring.
Beside me fluttered the wings
of another promise I made but didn't keep.
I sat there for hours until my thighs

were raw, ripped by those rough shingles.
I knew how to perform under the gun,
to tether myself farther and farther a field.
This was before the other daughter

died and only one of us cried, but long after
those old pumpjacks no longer
needled the horizon clean. The velvet mat stayed
unfolded, but I told y'all I prayed

anyway. The sky was famished with stars.
I couldn't help but count each scorched one.


THE PERFORMANCE OF NO ONE'S FINGERS

Before your final recital, I threw
    my own shit at Maestro,
which is all I knew of love
    until you showed up: cleaner,
I'm told, than my own struggle,
    a keening mouth refusing
or unwilling to take hold.

Maestro would make me practice
    spelling (abnegation, aborigine,
artifact) while you slept soundly,
    violin beside you on its own pillow.
I envied you enough to pretend
    to have fallen asleep, and even
arranged the spelling primer

into a winged weight across my chest.
    Still, Maestro shook me awake
to mouth into the cicada-slick hours
    a bunch of words whose meanings
I didn't have to know to spell correctly.
    'Abar, abar!' Maestro urges
in beetle-blistered memory ...

So many performances later, I forget
    you nightly. There's so much I didn't
say, or maybe I just need to hold
    your hand again through another
too-long interlude. I still feign sleep
    on nights I can't bear the legato
of anyone's fingers across me,

though artifact no longer eludes
    me. Sister, aborigine memory,
I stood beside your grave, but did not
    cry. I abnegated what we used to be,
and tried to be prodigy enough
    for four. Still, there are nights I can't
sleep and hear only your elegant détaché —
no one can keep you away —
    you lift the bow to the strings
of the violin I'd do anything
    to see you play, pray, play.


DJINN IN NEED OF A BITCH

The overpass's graffitied asphalt
drapes heavy shadows over pickup
trucks coasting always elsewhere,

while the humid city continues
to glisten with bodies, their crevices
hidden by cotton or lace, fingernails

bitten to the quick before scraped
down a sweat-brocaded torso, knees
shawled by soft or calloused palms.

Forget the sounds of glass shattering,
the alleyways I walk past, hunger
a thin blade knifing me cleaner.

Forget the shaking and raving man
I still see, for years now. Forget his voice
burning past me. Bitch, I need you,

bitch, I need, I need, he moans,
and I know it's not me he wants, but
the night is a varnished peeling wall

against which I, too, want again to be
roughly pressed. How many other nights
has he stumbled across this heat-neoned

sidewalk, pleaded with someone else
who isn't there? Low-riders bend corners
with earthquakes of bass, crackle of voices

strafe the air thirsty: thigh, throat, clavicle,
crook of elbow, curve of breast. Bitch, I need,
I need, and I never know if I want

to remember or forget those summers
spent sleeping underground in that old
peach-carpeted basement, how my sister

was once safe and warm beside me
the night I heard footsteps that weren't
any of ours. I took her smaller hand

in mine, waited until dawn
when the footsteps finally ceased: dream-
summoned, alive, or ghostly, I'll never know.

But what does that have to do with writhing
hips, tug of earlobe, the shock of new lips? I need,
I need, and the craving inside of me isn't

for food, and I can't ignore feeling
I've never belonged anywhere:
not this city or that village,

not in childhood's cradle, not this adult bed
I slide into alone after crying out
your name, O, Allah. Tell me why being

your disciple is so lonely, why this man
turns to no one beside him, tries
to embrace her. Tell me why the dead

are mirages stepping lightly across
the floors of strangers, their children
asleep below. Allah re, tell me why

you made it so that taking a kiss
full on the mouth feels like weeping:
the helpless swell, its delicious

spill. I need. I need.
Take then, as you took her too.


FEAST OR FAMINE

When the night gapes wider,
the child you once were
wakes and chokes with hunger
and you begin to soothe her

as you always do: first with hunger
and then more hunger,
because it's summer,
because the days are longer,

because you have to keep her lean,
because yes, she has to learn
to want, because yes, she has to train
to run through spring,

its melting forests,
to follow the path of pines,
far from her parents,
far from anyone who pins

her to herself after stubbing out lit
cigarette after lit cigarette
on her thighs. When the night
bloats open, tell the little

girl you still are and once were
to go back to sleep, go curl
inside the rise-and-fall of the warmth
asleep beside you — the one who loves her

and you — that she doesn't have to deny
the past anymore, that in Bangla, 'kheeda
laage' can mean I feel hunger
and I want you, that the swell of the belly

only disappears when she starves
too. 'Kheeda laage,' you say to the one who strokes
her hair and devours
your mouth, and the destroyers

whittle into whispers flayed of their lost
appetites — listen.


BEFORE THE ACCIDENT, AND AFTER

I promise to lose weight was a lie
I told in every register I knew, until
the night the wind blew backward,
and exactly seven yellow poppies grew
from the mouth of her corpse I tried
to cuddle. I then began to count
the number of times my insomniac
friend said the word tomorrow,
the number of years any cactus
outlasted my sister, pound after pound
of the weight I lost then gained —
    my gravy-thick horror.
My piles of chicken-bone sorrow.
I tried to stop missing my little sister
so I could better love my pretty mother,
shadows engraved in the secrets
of her wedding bangles. But no one wanted
to kiss me, and it doesn't matter. Fat
is a silver vessel that holds holy water.
I was fat before the accident, and fat after.


100 BELLS

My sister died. He raped me. They beat me. I fell
to the floor. I didn't. I knew children,
their smallness. Her corpse. My fingernails.
The softness of my belly, how it could
double over. It was puckered, like children,
ugly when we cry. My sister died
and was revived. Her brain burst
into blood. Father was driving. He fell
asleep. They beat me. I didn't flinch. I did.
It was the only dance I knew.
It was the kathak. My ankles sang
with 100 bells. The stranger
raped me on the fitted sheet.
I didn't scream. I did not know
better. I knew better. I did not
live. My father said, I will go to jail
tonight because I will kill you. I said,
She died. It was the kathakali. Only men
were allowed to dance it. I threw
a chair at my mother. I ran from her.
The kitchen. The flyswatter was
a whip. The flyswatter was a flyswatter.
I was thrown into a fire ant bed. I wanted to be
a man. It was summer in Texas and dry.
I burned. It was a snake dance.
He said, Now I've seen a Muslim girl
naked. I held him to my chest. I held her
because I didn't know it would be
the last time. I threw no
punches. I threw a glass box into a wall.
Somebody is always singing. Songs
were not allowed. Mother said,
Dance and the bells will sing with you.
I slithered. Glass beneath my feet. I
locked the door. I did not die. I did
not die. I shaved my head. Until the horns
I knew were there were visible.
Until the doorknob went silent.