middle-ground

my professor and i, we were both nervous about saying
general-iza-bility
can you say it one go, congratulations on pronunciation

there is a t.v. serial that makes me laugh,
i don't have to hear it twice, no innuendo i miss,
a history, a politics i do not have to grasp to learn, to reach, how can you not know this?
sometimes our teacher asks us about people with strange names
we do not raise our hands

we cannot talk about this t.v. serial in class because nobody knows
i imagine my awkward laughter at mahboob ahmed's play of words, i imagine a silent audience,
my laughter.

in fourth grade, we were handed dictionaries for
our mother tongues, we thought they were so special because
we didn't know they existed
we already had a Oxford one at home, its spine worn from use

we spoke middle tongues
safely lodged in the middle of of each language
far away from its unease, far away from its home
there is an urdu i cannot understand, there is an english i cannot speak

we're learning big words, secretly hoarding them like trophies but
presenting them like our own breath
there are new words everyday that slip from my tongue, that i have to look up
furtively, referents of language i have no image for, but i say yeah, yeah
yeah, the middle ground for yes and no, yeah

my heart pounds in happiness, anger and sadness,
grief and joy, the knock on skin, a call for words
and i give you the thing that i can speak
in emulation, in parody, in mimicry

there is a t.v. serial that makes me laugh,
it is old;
jehan aara's tongue is quick, sharp in the urdu
that i cannot speak.

i put air into my fists

and ask her, "how do you tell stories?"

she is not here.

my back is to the carpet, to the floor,

eyes given to ceiling, i ask 

her

cold fingertips press into the

heart of the matter 

this is not starry night, this is not quiet evening,

this is air conditioning in the Fall

spurts of my mother's snores

my back to carpet, my cold toes, fingertips

this is the day accompanying the dream,

but the dream is not beautiful, trimmed at the edges,

the dream is a dream of my own voice

telling more than asking

so i say to her,

"in repentance of our lies

in humility of our smallness

when our words, innocuous poems

fall like daggers on someone's skin,

when our products of aesthetic

are obscuring palms on our own eyes,

our stories refusals of sight,

finding out that the euphoria of

explanation 

meets distant eyes, scorned and wasted,

knowing all of this;

that is how you write stories."

she is not here,

she does not say,

my truth remains

solitary. 

shall i compare thee to a summer's day?
a Pakistani summer; heavy, thick on our bodies,
our panting bodies, vulnerable
against our own Sun the Sun wrought lethal
by poverty, loneliness
(an 80 year old woman withers under the sun, quiet
in death, and they found her much later. it was too hot to
go outside)

shall i compare thee to a summer's day you
intimate to my body, the currency of metaphors, you
how do i say you you, your claw clench ghost grasp
you leave me breathless, breathless, drawing air, scraping against
the atmosphere, that oxygen in the composition somewhere for a minute
doubtful, breathless; a wrench, a wrench, so intimate, you,
the intimacy of
disease

you, pushing world to daze, disease,
you, calling for a name, disease,
what are names against you, you, pervasive like life itself,
so what are names against you: trauma, depression, anxiety
you, who language recedes against
you, shall i compare,
you, the lethal summer, eclipse, tornado,
you,
companion.