INFINITY GHAZAL BEGINNING WITH LICE AND NEVER ENDING WITH LIES
Tarfia Faizullah For Hasna Henna and the Rohingya Lice? My aunt once drew a comb through my hair steady; she wouldn’t let what feeds on blood eat my inner tree. Where now is the word for such intimacy? I know it still, but all I see are jungles burnt of our rarest trees. My point is: it takes a while to say, “I am a fire hazard,” or, “a household of rare birds” is another way to say tree. I wrote one draft of this poem, then she died. Will I forget her name, Hasna Henna? Let’s smell a tree; night-blooming jasmine, o-so-heavenly! A sapling succeeds by flourishing from a tree’s seed. How else to perfume these needs we breathe? A sapling of course = a small and soft tree (i.e. baby tree). I grieve the rice she fed me off a palm leaf. Only now can I fully marvel: how finely formed is a tree! Someone I loved said to stop with the oceans in my poems — well, oceans + oceans + oceans! We drown so many trees. (Night blooming tree = baby tree = once and future tree.) Lately, all I think about are trees. Read this again to replace tree with refugee. Tarfia = joy in the margins + one who lies to protect trees. |
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