My hands and feet are brown suitcases
Inside the suitcases of my feet are maps to lost lands I can’t decipher but I try to through words, image, sex, and dreams my clitoris pushes against the prayer mat. In the suitcases of my hands are a million little selves furiously painting the cathedral of bones and muscle and I’m trying to translate this work
I was born in a drowned world, where astronauts toured through the streets men on tambourines drank vodka and wore bow ties
I was born in a Ballardian future with the waters rising until they hit the chins of protesters clinging to nothing but anger
I was born in a drowned world — an in/between world, not quite there and nowhere near here. This world existed like echoes, while I swam in my mother’s womb waiting to be born in a hospital in Karachi
This drowned beautiful world with road maps to Kashmir and music on rooftops Che Guevara at the airport unveiled women in socialist debates on TV
I was born in/between not even an I but a dream of love and desire and flooded beds
Every fucking day
Like a Sufi I drink from the flowers beholden to the sun and the wet skirts of the night lifted brazen sure-footed loose
Every morning even as I trail the cloak of stars and nothingness with a spoon for a heart fossicking for gold amongst the flowers your cock eye hand foot cunt lips tongue asshole nipples guitar-hand fingers me I moan and reach a Sufi ecstasy, my cunt clit tongue hip lips arms asshole neck legs wrap around me
At last, I hear the call to prayer amplified inside me