Shabnam Nadiya's Blog

maryfcoats-art:

An absolute joy to visit with @wiscobutler last night and hear him read from his newest novel ‘Little Faith’!

This is the world we wanted.

All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch’s cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas …

Now, far from women’s arms
and memory of women, in our father’s hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln–

Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.

Image: Something Happened in the Forest by Sol Halabi

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.

Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.

“From the side he’s like the buffalo on the US nickel, shaggy and blunt-snouted, with small clenched eyes and the defiant but insane look of a species once dominant, now threatened with extinction. That’s how he thinks of himself, too: deposed, unjustly. Secretly he would like them to set up a kind of park for him, like a bird sanctuary.”

- Surfacing, Margaret Atwood

“We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world…sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy, will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed.

This is where we have to begin.”

- Adrienne Rich

“Funny how often the Will of God puts a dollar in a pocket, said Dr. Ames.”

- Louise Erdrich, LaRose

“Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life.”

- Louise Erdrich, LaRose

“I discovered, a long time ago, even before I offered him my stories and was pressed into his service, that truth and credibility are two different things most of the time.”

- The Thing About Thugs, Tabish Khair

lesbian-leaf:

when people say we don’t need pride anymore, they forget that it’s not just a parade and a party. it’s a defiant and visible display of courage and hope from LGBT people, in a world where their lives are still threatened.