Poetry: Selections from Ali Abid

Now Years Ago, Now Next Year

To celebrate the election

our neighbors throw a brick,

pink and heavy, and with

a wet underside—the three holes

down its chest, meant just for

mortar, but heaped over with

garden soil and pale green things.

 

We make plans in corners—

inchoate as djinn bound to

broken tools and unmoved

stones; we wonder out of view,

where cold air and a blown in leaf,

scratch out a new border.

 

The brick lays in a field of shards,

and something young and uprooted

that followed the sun the way peace

never follows victory, shares our

shocked look—and our pane of clean glass

screams into absence.

A Ghazal in Place of a Watch

The low, white birds who shriek at borders saw how

they worried you and so fly lower, closer, even now.

 

Your father pulled a trunk handle steeply off a train car

and in the darkness noticed this cold, even now.

 

Your mother plucked her chin and thought about rainfall

in Karachi and her mother kneading her joints, even now.

 

The white lakes of plates, stacked and unused—

guest beds, cots, and offers, all waiting, even now.

 

The sorrow of fishes, the sorrow of birds,

the scattering of seed in tough husks, even now.

 

Wincing at the thought of who you almost left,

and her beside you—every shade of smile—even now.

 

Washing away everything, ablutions as for prayer,

but somewhere in your molar, an apple skin, even now.

 

Also in your mouth, some funny words in Urdu,

meant for more than delivering last rites, even now.

 

And even now there are monks on mountain paths,

humming, singing, shrouded in mist—yes, Ali, even now.

Ali Abid (he/him) is a writer, civil rights attorney, and policy advocate. He has been a featured storyteller at Pour One Out, a monthly storytelling series hosted by Volumes Bookcafe. He lives and works in Chicago.