Shadab Zeest Hashmi/3 poems

Woman Looks Down/ Jinn Looks Up

This unspeakable inversion
Smoke trembling down
the roof garden

curling
in its monkey tail
a hunger for history

That sponge
of hidden laws

More digging for jinn
more kneading for woman

Ancient bread
A weathered palm
open to hawks
star gazers
and swallows

Jinn Lands on Woman’s Palm

A jinn has climbed the vine
of henna to settle atop
the wheel
on my palm

King of all lost things:

Gold teeth
Family trees
wrapped in embroidered silk
Verses folded into walnut crevices
Names of women who have leapt
into the yawn
of demons
have slain with fruit knives

women who have sewn
shut war wounds
who have cracked history
in two

Funeral

Who knew
the gravedigger’s song
would get the most polish,
make fresh earth leap
in an unending dance with the shovel,
in our land of poets?

Look how
the slaughtered tongue
lying on serene
marble

is peppered with our dust

thick with silences.

Shadab Zeest Hashmi is the author of Baker of Tarifa, a book of poems based on the history of Al Andalus. Her poems have appeared in various journals in the US and Pakistan. She lives in San Diego where she has been editing an annual poetry anthology since 2000.