words jump from page to page like migrants attempting to find their place. the body is here, too, the whole body’s force, manipulating their song, fingers exchanging, transforming, sliding their currency of meaning. a wealth of music, extravagant choreographies of thought and sound. soundtrack of death and living.

the expression itself becomes the retreat, reclusion into the flesh; feeling the blood, the bones, the sinew and heat of pain, resistance, release, power. there is no one alongside me, i am not isolated. only an invisible film around me, penetrated by all i allow myself to experience. walls are unnecessary now, natural boundaries suffice to regulate everything necessary. food, water, speech, thought, breath.

as the cells rebuild themselves, sleep eludes me. when i dream i am announcing myself to the world as if my voice is only now being heard. surrounded by reflections of my inspiration, artists in celebration. and in the background, my two enraged, subdued sisters watching from a distance, their eleven children scattered into the joyous crowd.

two sisters my elder and estranged, the loss that made these creative works vital, grief that could not be expressed except in the abstract, explosions of syllables and rhythmic exaggeration. my words are not angry but punish with truth. by the time i am done talking we are alone together, the three of us, without the disguises, without the other people we use to draw distance between ourselves. the silence is louder than everything that came before.

identities strung together by genetics, blood tangling history’s limbs, birthdays and personalities repeat to incise the inherited fear of self we mirror in one another. circles of time go incomplete, spiraling into uncrackable codes, unreachable meaning.

put one foot ahead, turned out at the toe. fly.

© 2011 tahminah zaman

i write a poem with

my hips

a calligraphy in flesh

movement of oriental script

circling cresting undulating

under your watching gaze

my torso becomes a hungry snake

my spine a pillar of fire

body a wand of desire

craving you

calling you with my rhythms

coins clang upon my belt

against eternal buzz of thighs

we hypnotize each other–

performer and watcher

the stage a glimmering sky

between us

© 2008 tahminah zaman