Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry

BUSHRA REHMAN

BUSHRA REHMAN Born and raised in New York City, Bushra Rehman has also lived in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. She is the coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Seal Press, 2002) and the author of the poetry collection Marianna’s Beauty Salon (Vagabond Press, 2001). Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, India Currents, NY Newsday, ColorLines, Curve, and SAMAR, and anthologies such as Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality (Seal Press, 2006), and Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies (Kent State University Press, 2007). Her work has also been featured on BBC Radio 4, the Brian Lehrer Show, and KPFA radio. She has just completed her first work of fiction, an on-the-road Desi adventure novel. I’m a Pakistani from Queens, New York City, with roots in NorthWest Frontier Province, underneath the waters of the Tarbela Dam. Ami’s Cassettes The other day, I found my mother’s cassettes from the eighties they were full of love songs from Indian movies Ami used to tape them from the TV while she cleaned And I thought back to the orange carpets the sofas with their plastic the way everything was dusted and perfect I tried to fill the memory with her music to come up with something peaceful, something splendid but the tapes they just didn’t play that way You see, they caught all the background noise: the sound of babies crying children fighting 117 fire engines going and then the sound of a child being hit The children wouldn’t stop making noise until my mother’s own voice would break then there would be nothing but the sound of her crying and the sound of music in a language my mother was dying to hear I thought back to the orange carpets the way that I would press my face against them and against the plastic sofas until the perspiration would make it stick and listen to the sound of her crying and all the love songs of longing they promised everything missing in that house with its orange carpets everything missing in the plastic everything she ever recorded. At the Museum of Natural History As we both look up at the Tyrannosaurus Rex its bones painted black, its danger extinct I can hear the sounds of children echo throughout the museum And we are not afraid this way to stand a few inches away from each other We are not afraid because it’s over The Tyrannosaurus Rex does not scare us We don’t scare each other 118 BUSHRA REHMAN It’s over, the bones are beginning to fade and bleach in our failure But if one day someone finds our remains and decides to lay them right next to each other will they lay them in their proper ways will they mix up my hip with yours will they place the fingers of my hands on someone else’s palms Will they ever know this flesh answered the other that my fingers traveled all over the empty space around your bones The Difference It’s the difference between whether you talk to the girl or not whether you carry the moon home in the seat of your pants Burning and cool ready to lay it on your tongue in the privacy of your room and let its holy light burn through your blood Or whether you walk home with the moon in your stomach heavy as a rock With all the sidewalks pulling you down and all the well-lit buildings of a midtown night winking on and off Saying we know you, you’re the one who goes home alone and types in the dark with the small cut of your window always blocking the light of the moon off BUSHRA REHMAN 119 ...