Scherezade Siobhan

JAZBA

A toiled afternoon of blue spiderwort & stone-crushers.
A scurrilous game of cricket offending the cedar windows.
Men laboring their skin to the suggestions of kokum sharbat.
In my head, the drone of incalculable construction. Diurnal
earthmoving. My memory—an oxbow lake. Yet this room,
distant from all the life it could rent to sleep. Just the puzzle
of my own breath—pale ریت floating like a patch of drowsy
gossamer. It took a requited silence to finally see what we had
faulted into speaking. A sentence scattered within its intention’s
peculiar shipwreck. How far did you grow from me. How quickly
I tailgated the compass into the sea’s black dementia. How deep
was I laid astray to mine my body’s own nocturnal groundswell.
To return its found object. Its forged signature. Its foundered infinity.

bazm

ہمدرد     beloved of shared pain    praise to this     Untranslatable    cantillated 
as rain      margining       the duskgreen of sycamore maple      our laden frond
its tinkered codling       in our gauzed attenuate   what waters          ferment us  
leave us    to the lax pinions   of our gills   in their     wonted soughing     i clay
a word     then another     knowing        how little can be      kilned of memory   
that balcony   naked     of its pendulous vines     nameless colours     that once   
toiled against    the quiet address of my body     river of strands   its mud-linen
nesting his carrion    even the nerve of trees      lit with their own     recitatives
green in dhikr    we were once made    beautiful      by invisible hands      wood
-smoothed furs   lengthening the unseen    warrens   there is no language   that
desires my return   to any intended blooming   in every demarcation   of chance
or coil   i am only recognizable   in what i won’t answer    with this long walking
as if to put back   my ungrown    Indelible    قاصد      into the remnant    of debits
what skin am i    loosened from that mess of mud   gloving  the natural disasters  
nationed in my sleepwhat lapin-irisstrokes its heatagainst my peregrine

Scherezade Siobhan is an award-winning Indo-Roma writer, psychologist and community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass— a therapeutic space dedicated to decolonizing mental health. She is the author of 3 books - Bone Tongue (Thought Catalog, 2015), Father, Husband (Salo Press, 2016) and The Bluest Kali (Lithic Press, 2018). Send her puppies and chocolate at nihilistwaffles@gmail.com or at @zaharaesque on twitter/IG.