Almontaser, Threa

Pig Flesh
I don’t fuck with pigs like As-salamu alaykum
— Nicki Minaj

1. At lunch, we push loud and glaring titles in the scrollbar
2.  
3. not sure what we’re searching for,
4. our desires tip-toeing.
5.  
6. But maybe we’ll find it in one of these fisted
7. faces. In someone’s hot voice that sings
8.  
9. itself a verge, and hope to be forgiven
10. after the echo dies. We were never
11.  
12. given the language to say self or pleasure or —
13. a shaykh says holding your own body
14.  
15. is like eating the flesh of a pig
16. to survive from major starvation
17.  
18. when no other food is available. Should we
19. sleep in a crypt? Should we cut off
20.  
21. our own hands? Then the Khalīl
22. Jubrān fairy enters my head. He says
23.  
24. I am like the boundless drop in a boundless
25. ocean, a tree heavy-laden with fruit
26.  
27. that I may gather and give back
28. to myself. I believe everyone.
29.  
30. Nothing satisfies the scavengers, too starved
31. for too long. You know what it looks
32.  
33. like: snout-mucked swine, hunks
34. of forbidden fat, and we are hungry
35.  
36. for flesh, to suck the scuz from our split hooves,
37. limbs swaddled into a porky thicket, let
38.  
39. the rot bloom us clean. I am alive
40. writing this poem because
41.  
42. a jido didn’t have his oil spilled and stolen without
43. defiance, which has other ways of entering my life
44.  
45. like in the Taco Bell parking lot,
46. sliding off hijabs for a second —
47.  
48. Pakistani’s a long straight tide, Sudanese
49. a curtain of braids. These days I am never
50.  
51. sure if my tears come from the
52. come from the come from the God
53.  
54. come from the longing gut or I’ve been staring
55. at artificial ice pixels for too long. Keep
56.  
57. searching. What’s the holiest
58. thing you’ve ever seen? Girls
59.  
60. talk over each other between meat-warm threats
61. to dabiha: My grandma’s hands. A dove’s
62.  
63. wings. Abdul’s butt when he
64. bends over to pray. They are thinking
65.  
66. of dropouts working at their father’s deli, calling out
67. to us in Arabic when we step in for a snack.
68.  
69. Their thoughts a duplicitous
70. corner, pipes filling our lungs
71.  
72. with Starbuzz Blue Mist, Sex on the Beach, rousing
73. the animal their bodies remember they are
74.  
75. when starved, spitting its inborn snort
76. into the musk. Look how she teeters
77.  
78. on tightropes, half-crunk, twirling into the plunge,
79. then coming up for breath a little less cruel.
80.  
81. The adhan goes off. We don’t deny
82. its call, or the gunk of guilt God
83.  
84. dumps on our heads. Who is to say what holy is?
85. Mary’s menstrual blood? The prophet’s first
86.  
87. kiss? Adam and Eve’s graceless
88. groping? I try to unlock my cleaved
89.  
90. subconscious: one side a mosque, the other
91. a gritty sounder of unfocused breaths roasting
92.  
93. the air. I can still smell the hogs
94. when my head turns left and right
95.  
96. in prayer, the hooves gathered, for now, in some wild distance.