EATING IN MY SLEEP
I rub your color out of my eye and spine across the quivering twang of boughs
the sky ahead is alive and unremarkable
but for a caught blur of moon whittling into chasm like the eggplant
we will later smash, eat it hot and holy with our hands
I sour in tube light foliage
my soul-shaped compression flickers to a moth— the driveway is nondescript
bulb cavities of mock citrus hellish to taste, loquats green
in their wooly sacs quell hush & snip
You open the door and ask:
how do you cut so sharply on thin air?
*
do you remember the meat, the white rice and daal?
remember the goat brains in the blue ceramic bowl
do you remember the orchards of vampire bats?
remember the fruit pulp dribbling down their fangs
*
years from my mind I will locate my mind
in the cool tip of your earlobe let my hair grow inward to bone tissue
designate my scalp the brink of the world
love love what when love is a perfect skein of geese
when what I need is a pellet of naked dogs at the curb
look at that girl blossoms toss wingless from her chest
unbecoming each aspect of skin open the windows
air out the clots so as not to shame death
let them bulbuls in let 'em eat the throttled lychees off her back
SONNET ON TELEGRAPH HILL
Another excuse for entropy but this time with snow
and the shape of a man in boots. So my colored face
bulbs aubergine in shanked wind, hooked by the fat
glib of his mouth. Crafts my nature fettered. Like beautiful
women in wooden homes, I can be possessed too.
Please don’t stop. Power me right and show me the world
pose in a black jacket with a hood on—I’ll take it
and I’ll take that runny swamp too. Three Sikh men said:
you have lucky face. I replied in this order: Yes. Really? No.
Some mountains sit with backs to one another.
Some weep from the torso and beg for animals.
I, but I.
Haven’t been naked enough to know where the wind
hits harder. I prefer plateaus and the illusion of strength.
Photo of Momina Mela
Momina Mela is a Pakistani poet from Lahore. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the New Yorker, Poetry, Waxwing, THRUSH, diode, Prelude, Drunken Boat and elsewhere. She currently serves as the international editor for Washington Square Review and is an MFA candidate and adjunct instructor at NYU. She lives in Brooklyn.
SONNET ON TELEGRAPH HILL
Another excuse for entropy but this time with snow
and the shape of a man in boots. So my colored face
bulbs aubergine in shanked wind, hooked by the fat
glib of his mouth. Crafts my nature fettered. Like beautiful
women in wooden homes, I can be possessed too.
Please don’t stop. Power me right and show me the world
pose in a black jacket with a hood on—I’ll take it
and I’ll take that runny swamp too. Three Sikh men said:
you have lucky face. I replied in this order: Yes. Really? No.
Some mountains sit with backs to one another.
Some weep from the torso and beg for animals.
I, but I.
Haven’t been naked enough to know where the wind
hits harder. I prefer plateaus and the illusion of strength.