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.