cleansed body is made holy (2 Timothy 2:21)
Under British occupation there were multiple concentration camps in Sindh, Pakistan from 1895 to 1952.
I asked to be made holy so my mother cooked seraph
for dinner plume tinted February pink, muzzled malak
sautéed to a creamed leather sizzling oils dripped into our iron stove
as steam rolled off fugitive foam soon our plates left nothing
but a handful of eyeballs licked clean.
you understand that the Sindh body has always been sacred.
we lived by banks of Sindhu river in our sediment emerald
aquamarine and xenotime like baby تارو stretching open palms
throw glinting coins in the river for Sarasvati, rinsed
from a map like hushed waves removing silt from our feet. footprints
gone, cleansed. ready to be made.
we washed pink ooze off plates scrubbed hardened bits with steel wool
chipping the dish’s egg shell paint. erosion: to gnaw away—the word begs innocence
with its slow, circumspect manner of violence. yet the violence the violence redefines
home itself carves scars into metamorphic giants all sandpaper kisses and dreamy tide.
I asked the machine to look for Sarasvati it cannot find her on the map
nor can it find my uncle’s callused hand branded with a number
and clenched with spilt feed. our coats puffed tight like proud wet peacocks.
with coin under tongue he said come on, let’s go feed the birds in awe I watched
as he stroked the bird’s nape like a daughter he built her a house
for years I watched the home fill with chicks, rust, and tamarisk in summer
he dug a hole for jasmine so deep you could see only his torso
soil blackened up his forearms as rhizobium danced under his fingernails.
I stand here, in front of you, coated in grime.
prayer exists in all forms– drunk, desperate murmurs between night’s favorite lovers
confessions of a homeless fisherman sealed in the horizon’s quiet toothgap or a child’s
handwritten letter in the Arabic alphabet
neatly folded and stamped to a mother overseas.
Found St. Mary in my motherboard: glossed, electric, and pulsing. How to describe godliness
without terms of machine. Atman, nestled in a cluster of mechanism as amniotic fluid leaks out
my hard drive. The spiraling horns of a pale gazelle catch on the wire of our clothesline. We fold
laundry as I explain: there is a new type of empire, without land. Built of data and language. The
computer bends towards me, sunflower: you are part of the design. It asks me to input a language
and provides 500 options. I explain, we have seven thousand tongues. E-colonialism thesis: I’m
trying to upload histories in a language unrecognized by the machine. Look at how it glows.
Cracked quasar spilling luminescent egg whites. I forgot to mention, I met Aishwarya Rai online.
Through a deepfake. Her likeness, immortalized and downloadable. Angels understand
mechanism– they are, after all, perfect messengers. Input/output. Fallibility of cellular
degeneration. Cobalt stars: infallibility of machine. Can you not hear. The men singing as they
breathe your computer to life. The quantum flecks of gold in their tone. I confess, I am
embarrassed at how I worshiped the machine. To my daughter: come home. My hands are here. I
look at her palm and I can't remember which line is for heart. I’ve never heard her cry because
she’s never been. Alone. She asks me to define the word. Lack of presence I suppose. You carry
no one with you. Not even god. Not even your machine. I cup her face as I explain. There are
angels singing in motherboards. Pink wires squirm like microbacteria, congenital. Wet.
Understand, sweetheart, I fear that you will become part of the design.
