The wet grass discontinues cartwheels
and backflips for the heaving rawness of a
child’s chest/a dot. Cossetting the sun,
generations assemble to hang the moon.
It’s like swathing skeletons in linen but
draping the human pelvis in rosary
peas. The whiteness of our skin is up for
grabs, in case you needed to reaffirm our
legitimacy?
Swimming Against the Tide
Ramadan summers and stuttering ACs
against unwaged construction workers in a fast//
a TV soap against a medical degree//
solid mental health against an Instagram
follow// COVID-19 against the unquestionable
wrath of God// being white against someone avoiding
sitting next to you on the bus// social anxiety against
a blind date// a Wall Street analyst against fulfillment// a
root canal against an antidepressant// a first-class seat
against Southwest// zero custody of your children against
a shared bedroom where making love isn’t guaranteed//
lingering gazes by the office cooler against him pushing
me up against a wall// him waiting in a summer pool
of water ready to destroy my life against me arriving like a shiny,
new penny// his saliva melting my occipital bone
against his tongue lacing the juts of my back// spreading
the folds of your body against feminism// a first love
against a marriage matrimonial// a child’s bones buried
under a childhood home against cusses, 5 prayers
and biryani// my mother telling my psychiatrist
that I can will the depression out of myself against
him asking ‘can you will your bad eyesight out
or shall I keep the glasses?’//
Neha Maqsood is a Pakistani journalist whose writing on race, religion, Indo-Pak relations, and global feminism has been published in Metro UK, Express Tribune, Foreign Policy, Women Under Siege and other places. Her poetry, too, has been featured/ is forthcoming in over 20 literary journals and magazines, including Strange Horizons, Gutter Magazine, Marble Poetry, Abridged and more. In 2019, she was the recipient of the Black Bough Readers Award for Poetry. In 2020, her poetry chapbook, Vulnerability was awarded the 2019-2020, Hellebore Poetry Scholarship Award and is scheduled for publication by Hellebore Press for 2021.
Deezy Violet is a Nashville-based artist, as well as the guitarist and vocalist of grunge pop band Sad Baxter, which you can listen to here: https://sadbaxter.bandcamp.com.
