Threshold: One of the many narratives of I/ME

 

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

Author: Misbah Wolf

Misbah is many incarnations all existing consecutively. Her previous work with Peril Magazine was a response to land, identity and imagination, commissioned by Peril Magazine and Queensland Poetry Festival. You can check it out here, peril.com.au/current-edition/dreamscapes/. Her work has been highly commended quite a few times now in the Shapcott Poetry Prize and published in numerous anthologies including Australian Poetry Journal, Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, Peril Magazine, Cordite, Mascara Literary Review and recently featured on ABC's Poetica. She is currently working on a novel, and building a gypsy caravan to travel, perform and create with others.

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