Brick Lane
I don’t believe in Western psychotherapists: I believe
in shopkeepers from the Global South.
Hard techno blasts. He half-shoves me
into a backroom, “everything is £10
for you”. Outside, colonizer-spawn
resell patchworked saris we can’t afford.
My hands are empty. He hypnotizes me.
I buy a rainbow outfit, a new skin.
Outside:
multiverses of graffiti
Bangla street signs
rain in the sun angel tears.
Teenagers draped in vintage
corduroy slink against
stickered Victorian storefronts
under the tram overpass,
cigarettes drenched, melting
into smell & uncles
on motorcycles shout
in Urdu, my chimeric tongue,
oil-slick, tar-handed,
limned in watery sun.
I am both—
flaneur & child of exile.
I bide my time
in an Ethiopian cafe,
waiting for the rain
to stop and say sorry. It doesn’t.
Summer rain batters
Sun shatters
into double rainbows
doubled vision
I wear my unwashed double-
breasted black denim jacket,
smell like white anarchist and Amla,
zigzag home to the Underground,
skins like rain lilies
in morning dew
Umrah in the Anthropocene
No flowers grow in Makkah.
Sheikh tells us
you’re lucky to see grass
on mountains, like baby hairs
on old men
a sign of the end times.
The land has no dreams
Our hallucinations
are our sole property.
We are our own
sweetnesses, the Prophet SAW the sweetest
on this scarified land
The only way out
is through
the mountain tunnels
In my hallucinations
Los Angeles is on the other side City of (Fallen) Angels.
Men hitchhike on the meridian
but only camels stop.
Makkah demolishes sandstone, resurrects itself
in chrome
Masjid-al-Haram cats smile
at a synthetic palm tree
with cameras for fruit
We orbit the Ka’ba to techno din
of construction
We are the greatest outpouring
of energy
on earth
Pallid bats orbit with us
a fragile heartbeat
of wings and bare feet
flickering
for Fajr
Painting Courtesy of Our Featured Artist Fahed Mohammed Shehab
