each battle i win
pushes me closer
to you
and when i shed
my armor
i arrive
at the beginning

i go into a little room
of your heart
enter through curtain
of deep red silk // decide
this world within//////is not
the world outside
i come in each time

i see you
let you in through a pink
door with a diamond key

my open
is a white sky
without the prescribed
sunlight////////////a circle
of returning/////// of arriving
at the start///////at the core
pierce the heart of illusion
murder doubt
know only by flavors
and vibrations

© 2009 tahminah zaman

grief is always the same. a sunset sky pillowed with gray clouds, the light pushing through in a few places. always the shortness of breath and temper in the weeks after death. in the weeks death becomes permanent. the shadow against which life leans, darkening the light to bittersweetness.

the moment of impact occurs, orbits into the past, reoccurs and remembers itself. as if a vital organ is removed, a limb amputated, a man castrated, one color segregated from another; a form shattered by an arbitrary force.

. . .

sometimes the worlds eclipse, and the places where we met–to eat, to walk together, to talk about the listening, to laugh–make your presence so real. the corner with a bus stop bench where i saw you after work one day last june, and it was my turn to pay for lunch. i walk across the street from that corner five days a week now, because i still work there. it’s october of the same year and you’ve been dead for three and a half weeks.

when the pieces of the heart fall away, the underpinnings become visible. what kind of structure has built itself in that tender, enclosed space? what underlies the exterior, the living red that is designed to shatter and reinvent itself?

the doctor told me to expect either diarrhea or unstoppable tears the weekend after treatment. she said i was reliving the moment of impact, the instant i found out about your death, the experience of those seconds, the first hours in which it was confirmed, your name checked against the report made by the town’s coroner.

my lover and i gathered your eyeglasses, sneakers, phone and drove them to the coroner’s office to be joined with the rest of you there, in a fridge somewhere behind the generators at the back of the building. M., my lover, told me to try not to think about that, but the coroner said that your body was “unviewable”–it was easy, then, to know that you had been destroyed. by the impact. shattered to pieces by the force of a freeway car at six a.m., long before traffic slows to stop-and-go.

it was still dark when you left. by the time my alarm crowed at six, you were gone, your car out of sight where it had been parked outside. the front doors of the house were unlocked, the television on loud. you and your purse had disappeared. i thought you had driven home, not onto the freeway onramp a mile away, not pulled over and left your new car on the shoulder, not stood between the lanes without your shoes and glasses and waited for a fast-moving car, not stepped in front of it.

not died at twenty-three.

it is the places i remember being with you, the reality and gravity of your flesh, my spirit leaning against the vibrations of your voice, where i cross into the moments you were here. in the days after your death, i see myself where you were, waiting for death to claim you by force. using the car as a bullet, an actual gun became unnecessary. which parts of you remained after the first shattering? did the cells know to expect that sudden dispersion? did you feel the ones that followed? my cells imagine they are yours, over and over again, stretching themselves to recreate the moment you were taken away.

you told me you wore green on purpose that day, the day you had asked to meet again. our meeting turned to evening and you stayed the night, silent in the next room.

. . .

before retiring after midnight, i slice cucumbers for my swollen eyes, the bags of water that have collected beneath each one. unsightly patches of red mark the tears that scratched my face today, when remembrance of you became inescapable. any tasks i could complete, even if i could accomplish much in this halted state, cannot re-member those ruptured cells and limbs, cannot gather the blood that flowed away into a stain on a gasoline-streaked highway.

the clouds move, the light shifts as sunset nears dusk. gold shafts of sunlight break, and are broken by, the blanket of gray heading north. twilight paints colors that mirror dawn, marking the time of Maghreb prayer, and a new moon rises.

© 2009 tahminah zaman

temple of duty

your walls and thresholds

are many

hand-carved, etched

with text

the color of bone.

i lay my offerings along the line

of your vision;

this love an extraordinary routine,

blessing the inches of

breathing space

within me.

i am possessed of the gaze

of the highest.

pulled to center

by the recitation

of your names.

mornings i sweep

earthen floors

to your praises.

altar of memory,

forget all my hardships

and internments,

return my displeas

ure and rage:

i am free

© 2009 tahminah zaman

there must be some cell in your body
that remembers
your father’s arms cut off
his torso
with a British ax.
brown hands that pushed you forth into life
planted
watered
harvested your heart

and borrowed land to feed you
falling bloodily away.
where they touched earth,
they were named
Bangladesh and Pakistan.

surely you recall
your mother’s final exhalation;
the ulcered belly
whose memory of bearing, once
–a world away from her birthplace–
your baby flesh,
was buried with her
in her grave.

down the front of my body,
the tearing of Punjab
into two
leaves a gash, stapled over,
crusted with the salt of red tears;
i do not weep as my daughter
washes away the used tissue,
i do not cling to what must
be released.

my children’s feet will step
across the scar
that made–unlike nature–
three from one:
pieces whose forms fit
snugly together
each unclaimed by the other,
abandoned.

© 2009 tahminah zaman

the ecstasy that is

desire and the

instant

need only

be born

© 2009 t zaman

Posted in cosmology/mythology, hip hop poetry, in progress, life, love poetry, parapsychology, poetry, religion/faith, self-love, short poems, Uncategorized

i find myself walking down maple street, toward the main drag, toward home. i am wearing my red stretch cotton dress, the one with 3/4 sleeves and buttons down the front. the soles of my tan cowboy boots bounce against the pavement. i think of my lover, i think of home, and my step quickens. i open my phone to phone him, my love, to ask him to meet me there. to be there when i reach home.

my key lets me into a huge manor, the heavy oak door swinging inward to welcome me. on my right is a raised living room, walled, with arches cut into it. one of the arches has a cloth hanging, a transparent cloth. once i open the door, i feel someone inside the house. i tense, expecting to see an intruder. rather than removing my boots i wear them into the foyer, dirtying the polished wood floor beneath my feet.

through the first archway, where the cloth hangs, i see the moving silhouette of a woman. her back is to me, dark hair flowing against her long tunic. she is walking away from me. i take a few more steps and look through another archway, open and unclothed. i see a brown woman picking up a prayer mat, a jah namaaz, rolled up after use. it is my mother, my muslim mother who has been dead for almost three years.

she is wearing her glasses, her tunic is a deep gray-blue that reaches the floor. in a moment she is before me and i embrace her, kissing her cheek and descending to my knees. her feet sit in platform sandals, the kind she wore when she was alive because she said she couldn’t walk without a little bit of heel anymore. i kiss each of her toes, starting with her right foot. i don’t know why i start with her second toe.

do i rise and embrace her again after that? i don’t know. the dream stretches on and on, one of my sisters enters the dream, the one i grew up with. the one i was a baby with. there are others around, other women. during one moment in the dream, the three of us are together and i can’t stop crying. my mother, after all this time, is still telling me not to cry, not realizing that the coming together of this world and the next is overwhelming for the living.

i was sleeping next to my lover when my mother visited me in this dream. i had been praying for a visit from her, i had been praying for a beautiful dream to interrupt the obscure, twisted ones that seemed to be filling my mind every night and morning. i had blamed my mother in life and after her death, i had promised when i washed her body before her burial to forgive her, let everything go, and yet some resentment remained. it pushed her spirit away. she stopped her visits during my waking hours because the ghostliness of them scared me. it was like living in a ouija board, like i did when i was younger. fascinated by the power of calling spirits to me. but i prayed for her return, i asked for a peaceful reunion, and i was granted my desire.

i recall the tan cowboy boots against the pavement, the happiness in my step as i heard my lover’s voice on the phone. i turn the key into an unknown mansion, and the dream begins again.

© 2009 t zaman

love is a home we
re build
each day

a sculpture in sand
that lasts until
swept away by tide
or wind

in an instant
re written

© 2009 t zaman

if i open unto myself
if i open myself
what left will there be?

if i speak
my name
if i leave
my trace

betrayal
of silence
loyalty to the familiar

i am released
from my roots
and there is nothing
but sky

i went somewhere with you, i don’t remember where. i can’t sleep tonight and i’ve drunk too much wine to read any stories out of a book. i don’t want to write this and i won’t be able to sleep until i do.

unravel the vision, i suppose.

the roots that ran from my belly to the center of the earth held me, rocked me, and released me to follow my destiny. they were like the flowers in frida’s “my nurse and me,” like the vines of flowers or the ducts for milk that wait in each breast for the chance to feed a child. and then i was rising, released from my roots into the sky, the same sky that i was afraid to look at when i was little for fear that i could fall upside down into that unpredictable eternity.

all this traveling through air and cloud vapor brings me to you. you are there, you are whole, you are brown and beautiful. i see a home in the hills of berkeley, i see trees and love and a woman in a warm wooden room with a computer. there are long layers of black hair speckled with gray, there is that symbol of strength i conjure and project onto myself in all my dreams. after four years of short hair, have i ever dreamt myself as i look?

i ask you if you are still afraid of money, terrified of love, and you embrace me. there are no words to wash away my questions, yet they are answered. i can feel the swell of wealth everywhere, i look at the wise eyes absorbing the fear in my questions without a change in expression, a look of love and complete acceptance of all we have seen, all we have done. even the shame is wiped away.

i watch you closely as you break away from me to be surrounded by three daughters, your long hair clinging to their collars as they gather around you like a halo. i look for traces of sorrow, of struggle, of discontent in your face and cannot find them. and then there is m, our lover, who joins the embrace. everything i ever wanted is in this room. after watching you a long time as you, my mother, my lover, my guide, my future self, my essence show me the truth of my destiny, i turn to leave knowing i will return. knowing the next stage of my life will bring me closer to that moment of love we witnessed together.

© t zaman 2009

my love,

this song makes me miss you so much. how many thousands of miles are you away, traveling, somewhere in the motherland. the place we both got our brown skin. you say that each trip you make to india changes you, reminds you of our imagined hardships here, renews your love of our origins. i hope the tropical dew nourishes you, not like the cold oakland winds this time of year. when you return i’ll make sure to cover you in shea butter, i’ve been practically bathing in it lately, the air is becoming so dry. this weekend felt like summer during the days. it scares me that the seasons switch places.

it’s almost monday. ten more days without you, my love. my heart counts the hours down, i can hear it in my chest. ticking. can you feel the bones of our ancestors holding you up in that homeland? we’ve covered the earth over, it’s true, but we started somewhere close to where you are now. even the thick pollution of mumbai air, i know, can’t keep all the energy in the ground. i hope you are relaxed, dear one, i hope your soul is refreshed by that presence.

when you come home, when you get back to oakland, it will have been more than three weeks since our last kiss. in a sense, time has stopped here without you. there is no one to love without you, no one to whom i can give myself, no one i want to touch. it’s during your absence that i feel this lack i can only celebrate because it means that finally, we have found one another. all the little terrors of everyday life, the dangers of existing are more difficult to bear without you here. i must have been more used to them before i met you. the knowledge that life is temporary, momentary, won’t leave me. what if even a lifetime together isn’t enough? twenty-two days without your hands, your lips, your eyelashes, your touch–the unthinkable has arrived.

it’s nearing midnight and i imagine you waking up from your deep sleep. i make a cup of tea, pull a teabag from the paper bag inside a box with a striped bengal tiger on the front. the body of the tiger is lithe, its black markings slashed over orange and white hair. in the background, the leaves of a palm tree, a brown woman in a sari walking a gourd of water down a dirt road, tall reeds flanking her moving body. in the foreground, huge bowls of the nutmeg and chicory to be ground into the chai. Bengal Spice, that’s the name of the flavor.

my love, i am waiting for your voice, your words, to reach me again.

until then,

your goondi

© 2008 tahminah zaman

stuck in this city. someone’s stuffing seasoning is bringing my dead mother back to life in a corner of oakland, california, where my neighbors and i are preparing dinner. it takes 40 minutes to mince the stems and leaves of purple and green kale, the rainbow chard to be added to onions and garlic frying in a black wok. the table is set with painted china plates and monogrammed silver, dug out of the attic after ten years of retirement. the candles are lit, the guests arrive, sparkling wine poured. there are six diners in all, none of them you.

you, my love, are trapped in mumbai today, thousands of miles away from the fake turkey meat and pear cranberry sauce in my mouth. you are there for a wedding whose four-day-long grandeur has been shaved down to just a small ceremony and reception at the end of this long weekend. thanksgiving day for you meant seeing the streets, schools, and city buildings shut themselves away beneath a blanket of shock. and, after all, weren’t you supposed to go to that fancy hotel that night, the night they started taking hostages and killing people for being born in the wrong countries? your family was to go there to celebrate someone’s birthday. something got in your way, and you didn’t go.

i watch the prayers written in arabic on the pages of my holy Qur’an, i imagine they are spelling your name, your family name, the gujurati syllables of your signature. the lucky name your parents gave you. i know you are there, in your bed, somewhere in mumbai away from the rooms where people are hiding and lying about their origins, trying to save their own lives. where lakes of blood and purses litter the lobbies of hotels and the hallways of hospitals, strewn with the bodies of people murdered by men who called themselves muslim. they knew about this yankee holiday, those men who chose to punish those they decided were responsible for what’s wrong in the world.

all this outside your door and yet i know you are safe, in bed, your hands searching for me, invoking me across a thousand national borders, across the ten hours of dragged time between us. feeling my body cover yours, breathing my flesh around you. i know you are listening, looking for an opening into peace, into hope, gripping yourself against all your memories of me, wanting me. your desire brings me into your room. you touch me, finding my face against yours, breasts pressing into you, my hands reaching for the parts of you that miss me most.

“on monday,” you say, “only ten more days.” until you are home. until the space between us dissolves into one long memory of separation, recalling the miles of telephone wire that bring your voice to me, these nights alone in a bed that’s grown too big without you. the single line that connects yesterday to today is a gash through which you will slip back to me. this leaving and returning a rhythm of loving, the illusion of separation to be disproven one more time.

© 2008 tahminah zaman