[309 words]
—for E. R. Shaffer
For a moment,
the tip of your finger
lights / on the edge of my hand
like the toe of a starling, // and all I am is dream
—a hovering / above the world’s face
like the flight // of the voice of the
qari’ah, a pregnant cloud / that will
never let fall the whole of its rain. //
God forbid the page should run dry, / but
who am I to water it? What angel // will
stuff my mouth with unwithered figs— / take my
head from my shoulders like the cap // from a well
and slake me? You, nujaym, / red as Antares, will you
not lie with me // beneath the feet of ar-Rahman, washed
/ in blood and matted hair? Will you not // know me?
All I can speak is one / forty-sixth of a warbled note—
// the water held in a sparrow’s beak. / All else you must
drink from my offered neck // —the throat where the angel
has scribed it. Truly, / the tip of your nail is the talon
of a bird // of green. When it leaves my skin, I am undone
/ — nothing left but the shadow of my waking—
// while you are made flesh—a neck / that bears
the scent of paradise, // lips stained in tea
that tastes / of us both. You send
me to the kettle, to the jihad //
of love’s austere offices, and leave me
/ to thirst— leave my hands
to run // from the hill of my left
shoulder to the hill / of my right, claw-
ing at the earth in a fever // beneath
clouds of vulture- circled / star-
lings and pyres of rosy ash,
// nails like the talons
of some falling bird,
/ some desperate
angel, seeking
blood.
Reyzl Grace is a writer, librarian, and translator whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other periodicals. Currently a poetry editor for Psaltery & Lyre, she lives as an expat in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.) Find more of her at reyzlgrace.com and on Bluesky @reyzlgrace.
