Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry

MONA ALI

MONA ALI Mona Ali’s poems have appeared in publications such as the Asian Pacific American Journal, and she has been invited to read at various venues, including the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Her awards include fellowships from the Ford Foundation , the University of Cambridge, and Vassar College. Ali is an economist by profession and is currently an assistant professor at SUNY, New Paltz. She lives with her family in the Hudson Valley in New York. I was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and hold passports of two countries, neither of which I particularly consider “home.” Noor In the back of an anthology a poet describes herself simply as the mother of a newborn girl whose name in the Arabic means sunlight, “Noor.” The reader thinks, as her own marriage falls apart, as a new year invites her into fresh starts of grief of her aunt, Noor, who fell in love with her cousin Nayyar, which means moonlight, and married him against the family’s wishes. And the reader imagines love as the boat that must have bobbed through clouds of ash and smoke into the sunlight with a crescent shaped moon for a sail. 220 The Wolf’s Cry A Zuihitsu Sixteen emails in 12 hours. • I ask: is desire confined to language? He writes: desire is of language and language, of earth. • Language? the slippery lingual Earth? the slick labial Desire? for pulse, clavicle, even sinew • Letters slipping into mailboxes sublingually. • Does thin air carry smell quicker than heat? I inhale the cinnamon in the bread the neighbor’s baking. • In the back of the brain, an aching for mint and mulberry in the tobacco we smoked from nargilas. And Fairuz rising in arabesques from ancient amplifiers. • He writes: if he wore rings, would I kiss them, finger by finger? MONA ALI 221 • How else and what to trust except for the dreamt response. • Tomorrow, to sweep the silk fleece of snow before it freezes into sleeves of ice. • Icicle, tricycle, circle, triangle • Mother calls, voice stern. Khala has a malignant tumor. She doesn’t say breast cancer. • Tonight, to sleep alone and sleeplessness. • He’s in Rome with his new girlfriend. He’s just told me about her. • Loss: earth falling in on itself. • I write back: before you do anything foolish, take this married woman’s advice. • In Makmalbaf’s film, Gabbeh runs away with the horseman who serenades her, 222 MONA ALI voice disguised—only she knows— as a wolf’s cry. • Earth, then, also as magic carpet: Gabbeh in the Farsi. • Literal translation gabbeh: rug Plural in Urdu: rugoon As in: meri rugoon mein tayra hee khoon daurhta hai Trans.: Be these my veins, it is your blood that weaves through them. • Gabbeh runs away on the horse her lover’s brought. She rides faster, stronger than he does. Her father chases them, fires twice. Then returns to the tribe saying he has killed them both. • School children cry zindagi rang hai: Life is color. Gabbeh calls back ishq rang hai: Love is color. and wind wooing the secret ears of corn. • Gabbeh later reveals that Father pretended murder so that her sisters wouldn’t heed the cry of wolves. • No one hears canaries by the springs anymore. MONA ALI 223 • I use The Lover’s Discourse as self-help guide or manual. • FUTURE FACTORY: The inscription on a card from a London gallery I haven’t decided whether to send or not send you. • Mahmood, tell me about Gabbeh Does she return to her mother? If not, do her gullible sisters Sometimes envy death? • In Germany, because of racism Your parents renamed you Christian. Hussein in Cote d’Ivoire, Christian in Munich. • Love, your skin— a river under moonlight. It isn’t hers even if it isn’t mine. • How you courted me in German, French, English. How you cursed me in Arabic. • He writes that he wants to talk, that he’s thinking of converting, And I know, it isn’t to me. 224 MONA ALI ...