#fasghar

[explore-chat]

I Don't Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth

by Fatimah Asghar

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees are making a comeback, one snug tight in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince’s was orange & we both find this hard to believe; today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read & two little girls would sit next to me; you caught a butterfly once but didn’t know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

(Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.)

[explore-chat]

If They Should Come for Us

by Fatimah Asghar

these are my people & I find them on the street & shadow through any wild all wild my people my people a dance of strangers in my blood the old woman’s sari dissolving to wind bindi a new moon on her forehead I claim her my kin & sew the star of her to my breast the toddler dangling from stroller hair a fountain of dandelion seed at the bakery I claim them too the sikh uncle at the airport who apologizes for the pat down the muslim man who abandons his car at the traffic light drops to his knees at the call of the azan & the muslim man who sips good whiskey at the start of maghrib the lone khala at the park pairing her kurta with crocs my people my people I can’t be lost when I see you my compass is brown & gold & blood my compass a muslim teenager snapback & high-tops gracing the subway platform mashallah I claim them all my country is made in my people’s image if they come for you they come for me too in the dead of winter a flock of aunties step out on the sand their dupattas turn to ocean a colony of uncles grind their palms & a thousand jasmines bell the air my people I follow you like constellations we hear the glass smashing the street & the nights opening their dark our names this country’s wood for the fire my people my people the long years we’ve survived the long years yet to come I see you map my sky the light your lantern long ahead & I follow I follow

(I do not know how or where I stumbled upon her, yes twitter probably, but her work and life are increasingly more essential to mine.) ps. We have a fortnightly newsletter now!