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  • Invocation, and: Fire Starter
  • Alycia Pirmohamed (bio)

Invocation

Somewhere, they are kneelingand I am forgetting your name,

how to hold each fragmentof sound in my mouth—

Allah,my thoughts are scattering in the wind.

They land in Dar es Salaam,in India,

in miles of golden grass.Sometimes, they fall into my own palms

as I pray next to my fatherfor my father.

My Father, I am discovering howto feel loneliness

in a series of languagesby cutting open

each word like a dark black plumonly to eat the skin. [End Page 105]

Tell me I am a little closerto the beginning

that I am a young tree on the sideof a mountain,

a birdcircling a volcano,

or simply a sound travellingvertical.

Fire Starter

This is the humof a northern forest.

Don't forget all of the saltthat has gone into this healing—

winceif you must,

call out to India for two hundred yearsif you must.

I am building a home andburning down

my body that has never feltlike my body,

drinking from a springto balance [End Page 107]

all of this smoke.

I am building a firethat snags

onto the redwoods.

I want to redesign this dishmy body was

born into,cardamom and brown skin

multiplying within the agar.Hair that smells

like burning grass,a landscape that reaches for

another land. [End Page 108]

Alycia Pirmohamed

Alycia Pirmohamed is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, where she is studying figurative homelands and the work of second-generation immigrant artists in Canada. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, wildness, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Grain Magazine, and Vallum Contemporary Magazine. She was born in Alberta, Canada, and she received a mfa from the University of Oregon.

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