Oily sin tinged green and supple
as grace. I am keening. I end where I begin. A belly
full of the meat of my own desires.
Being the first-born daughter means I am always tired
and bored of my own silences. Or siblings. Often
I confuse the two. I am accustomed to men who can cross
continents but never the gulfs in their own living rooms. I think of distance
as I stand in front of a gilded Rossetti, studying the precise
angle of a pout. Harp of lip. A cold slab of shoulders. Eggshell wrist.
Is beauty not this auburn haired and exacting?
Like the feeling of just making the last train. The obscene shape of your panting
on window glass. A man naming you after a country he has never seen.
I don’t know what it means to stand in front of a goddess
and not see my own reflection. Convincing you is half the problem.
Yes. It is arrogant to think you are the problem. But it has to be one of us
and it isn’t me. I don’t make the rules. I am made by them.
Let me be a slipped disc. Unmade. Let me be the foetal position you assume after.
Let me be your every assumption. Make me regret how small my palms are.
Make me regret nothing.
Momtaza Mehri is a poet and essayist. She is the co-winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in Granta, Artforum, Poetry International, BBC Radio 4, Vogue and Real Life Mag. She is the former Young People’s Laureate for London and columnist-in-residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space. Her chapbook sugah lump prayer was published in 2017.