My Faith Gets Grime under Its Nails

               ١

قل—say, he is allah, the one

I confess to sleeping coiled on my night-

blue prayer mat

                                      more often than I stand bent in ruku.

Even when I posture piety

I blink steady, lashes keeping count of the hand-

knotted flowers fringing the rug

                                      rather than God’s pristine names.

The places I’ve prayed—elevators, Victoria’s Secret

fitting room, the muck-slick meadow after rain—

will testify for or against me,

spilling through my Book of Deeds

                                      in ink of blood or honeyed milk.

               ٢

قل—say, i seek refuge in the lord of mankind

My faith is feminine, breasted

and irregularly bleeding

                                      My faith gets grime under its nails

unburies maybe-mothers

to suckle them sacred. I believe

what I can’t leave. I eat

hand-slaughtered beef

                                      spared of pain. I laugh about the Banyan tree

in Khyber chained by a drunk British officer

convinced it lurched toward him. I pull up a picture

online, show my mother the roses

planted neatly around it,

                                      the rusted shackles no one dares remove

               ٣

قل—say, i seek refuge with the lord of dawn

Once a month blood roams

like mint over immaculate grass,

                                      the adhan trills from my arboreal center.

Though excused, I wake

before the white thread of day-

break to open my window,

                                      let the angels in

to witness the ache

and erase a sin for every devoted cramp.

Lord, you pardon my pain.

Lord, I parable my name.

As best as I can,

                                      I am raising my hands—

               

               ٤

قل—say, o disbelievers

I read my chaar qul, cup my hands and blow.

I misremember and enter with the wrong foot

first. A woman crowned

                                      holy is a calamity worth repeating.

Eve languished

motherless among rotting cores,

the sweet stench of fruit flies

at last shown their purpose.

                                      What wilt, what putrefaction

of her will to wonder. I wonder how

to hallow the women I’ve sprung from.

I haven’t begot a thing but inherited

wounds, I can’t help but bear

                                      what barely belongs to me.