BIO
Shadab Zeest Hashmi is the author of poetry collections Kohl and Chalk and Baker of Tarifa. Her latest work, Ghazal Cosmopolitan, is a book of essays and poems exploring the culture and craft of the Ghazal and Qasida forms, and has been praised by Marilyn Hacker as “a marvelous interweaving of poetry, scholarship, literary criticism and memoir.” Winner of the San Diego Book Award for poetry, the Nazim Hikmet Prize and multiple Pushcart nominations, Zeest Hashmi’s poetry has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu, and has appeared in anthologies and journals worldwide, most recently in World LiteratureToday, Mudlark, POEM, Prairie Schooner and McSweeney’s In the Shape of a Human Body I amVisiting the Earth. Her new manuscript Comb has been named the winner of the 2019 Hybrid Book Prize by Sable Books. She has taught in the MFA program at San Diego State University as a writer-in-residence.
Notes for a Combing Song
Shall we begin with a comb and an empty field
(jeweled grass, November sun, long-necked
bottle of mustard oil)?
I’ll never believe there is time enough
to untangle from (-tango with) our shadow selves
but let’s try all the same. Bring a radio,
a week’s worth of The Frontier Post
for drips, bring a thermos of chai, a clear
mind, some kind of winter halva with blanched almonds,
a Namda rug— itchy, but as you know, its gigantic
tawny-maroon daisies and juicy green ferns
are reminders that the universe
has a big heart. It is tightlipped but true.
Maybe you’ll align shadow
with shadow, cover my new periwinkle
sweater with a towel before oiling
and braiding my hair.
Maybe you’ll let the cats yowl in the distance, the cauliflower
overcook, fill the dialer with marbles, let the phone ring.
Comb Maker
Her blindness ………electric
A Silkworm’s
delicate …………….eyeteeth industry
…………….Was she once a whalebone—
…………….Marbled Baleen plates of an ancient comb
…………….herself?
…………….Was she a captive-weaver
…………….with only her skeletal toes to separate
…………….and untangle the threads
…………….A florescent filter a tender fork in the road
…………….A pronged cactus a flayed spider
…………….Truth teller of history
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