WINNER OF 2021 SOPOCO EMERGING WRITER FELLOWSHIP
Baptism
for my father’s church my mother dresses my sister
and me in orange burned
one hundred times over prays
in Arabic rhythmic applies a steroid cream
to my small blistered crown all my hair
in her palm a loss
I follow her bismillahs swallowing
all her syllables
in Bible study the teacher points
to a map with colors torched
as the ones we wear
desert shades
skin
something left
in the sun you girls
he says pulling apart
a tangerine
you and your foreign mother
you are from here
the land of Ezra Isaiah or Daniel
or evil kings
everything in sand
could be home
but are we Samson’s girls
did he set foxes
fields on fire
in my mother’s country
will I ever be wanted like Delilah
hair slick to my waist I want
to know when
she cut his hair
as he slept
did it fall like mine
this strange
slow halo
and what kind of promise
do I make to make
something stay fall
upward profuse
the opposite of exile
black as my mother’s
worthy of a veil
in congregation the preacher
water in square palm turns
my mother my sister
makes twin tributaries
of their parted hair
I imagine myself a bride
a jawbone to swing
imagine myself the nest
of bees the lion the rope
the valley the honey the lock
the loom of my mother’s
quiet worship
imagine my hair growing
long in miracle and stained
glass light stream
if my hair is my country
I want all my people home
the preacher lifts
up my hat I did not want to wear
and I wait for God
I wait for God
but I have already
lost all my hair
Carpet
he wants
to know if it matches
my drapes
in this photo flattened
I am so bald
I am a year
without any of it
he is unremarkable
dating app lonely
when I was fifteen
a doctor asked
if my pubic hair was
normal
after so you married
a white boy
to my mother
his hair was the color
of my mother’s
of my carpet in college
I used to pay
Priscilla the Brazilian forty-five
minutes up the interstate to rip
out all the hair
I thought no one wanted
it took
years to grow
back it can take
time to weave
anything
a man introduced
me to his mother outside
Esfahan while she worked
a loom so fine it was threaded
metallic on tile no
curtains in her house
he wiped
dead dragonflies from wind
shield glass asked
could you ever
love me
I said
No but he kept
the question over
turning their wings
in his hands
is loneliness anything
but a question asked over
and over and over
or the one made
to answer is it always
a symptom
of loss
does it always match
the body
that holds it
I am years without
a touch a room a mouth
a reason to pull
the blinds I must tell you
I was loved
once
I understand
the wings
the thread the question
you’ve lost
nothing if you’ve torn
it out yourself
so what he really wants
to know is does loss
match loss match
loss match
loss
match
loss
Makeup Tutorial at Grey Gardens
should I show you how my aunt did me
she cut my cheekbones from baby fat
with a set she brought from Turkey
and held my face and kissed my lips
after drawing them in umber
her sponges stained and sick sweet made
the night around my eyes and she copied
her tattoo eyebrows onto mine then dragged
stars against my hairless arms
no one else looked so grown up
at the school dance my teachers balked fish
faced and no one asked me to sway
how long did it take you to figure out
how to frame your face and how old
is your pencil I see your eyes are hooded
like the cape the sweater the skirt you pin
like mine it takes practice to know our shadows
Edie your nose is running
like mine too without any hair
don’t be embarrassed
here is a tissue
to hold yourself with
while I contour fox eye
full face I refuse falsies
they don’t stay with us
and the light can be
cruel I hear everyone
like us is blessed with
good skin clear as fall
sky poreless a petal
everyday I make
a wing I miss
my eyelashes
a little bit less
Edie let me define your
mouth come make a kiss