Poverty is the cacophony of a street carnival:
caged pigeons for sale
whose freedom my mother purchased
from slaves,
skeletal donkeys in mid air
braying against the pain
of overloaded, wooden carts,
that fat, bearded jackass of an imam
on the loudspeaker, who,
five times a day, loves to hear himself,
(Do you know how much warm blood the Azaan
can feast on, that arresting
glossolalia turned carrion from canary?)
bright kites of all colors
the only rising architecture
that stitches heaven's cobalt maw,
the dead whale shark that washed
ashore, dozens of Karachi dockworkers
standing upon its unbreathing belly,
and all my senses can focus on
is the scum in the seawater,
my sorrowful grandfather chanting
We
are all of us
Allah.
You fly me like a kite on a day the wind is dying.
:
This time, a monsoon. The death toll nears 400.
Women and children's bodies learn new rhythms:
lifelessness, sinking, bobbing, bloating.
A man mistakes a goat that repeatedly laps
the muddy banks for a cow that still clings to life.
The body's largeness is deceiving.
He thinks of the near past, of milk and cheese
before the animal's last wail
pierces his imagination back to stiff legs and pried-open-eyes.
:
The body's mind is misleading. The death toll surges past 800.
The printing press, the Internet, the tape recorders, the cameras
can't see enough. Can't be as subjective as the eye
that opens
or closes:
Those people all deserve it.
All those fucking Muzzies and terrorists.
If the USA sends one penny of aid I'll quit being an American.
It's a lesson from their own God, about goddamn time.
Do those Osamas and Saddams even believe in Noah?
:
Oh, they believe.
With eyes pried open, they believe.
:
And as all the world burns
a butterfly lands before me.
Perfectly proportioned body,
orange wings that
open blue
close yellow
open green . . .
It takes a disproportionate amount of effort
not to protectively cup the thing in my palms and kill it.
Alia Vancrown was born December 1, 1987. Granddaughter of U.N. diplomat and poet, Saiyed Mazhar Hussain, descendant of poets Azhar Hussain and Athar Hussain, award-winning screenwriter Abrar Alvi, and dramatist Razia Farhat, daughter of Asif and Aisha Hussain, Alia Vancrown writes with the torch that is her ancestors' undying legacy. She was first published at the age of 17 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize at 18. After completing high school, she ran off to Chicago, Illinois from Sparta, New Jersey to pursue Poetry and Love. Alia Vancrown currently resides in the suburbs of Chicago with fellow poet, M. André Vancrown.
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