Flawless
A kind of perfection,
each singular flicker
of fireflies left untrapped
by jars, how they don’t crowd
each other’s shine
among trees left unsawed,
each leaf a stemmed mouth
drinking from
the creek that divides & mends
the earth to and from itself,
where shrub,
shadow, spider, all thrive
on blades of grass so thin
the wind flattens
their swaying dances into horizon
that the tomato vine
inscribes itself
into, each grown from seeds
barely the size of irises
of the eyes
of humans who plant them:
humans who climb up
ladders and fall
from them, who pause
to shake out gravel
from their shoes,
who eat from fine china
or trays or bags
of Cool Ranch Doritos,
or barefoot at twilight,
tomato in hand, red
seeds swarming
my chin. I knew you then,
Lord, standing alone
but not lonely
below your sky stabbed
by the vast perpetual
yearning of disciples
and stars that are born
and burn out close
enough to sing to
but not touch. I watched
the fireflies do what
they do, what I’ve
been fighting to do—
no matter what color
I am, what shape,
no matter if my people
break bread or each other—
to glimmer flawlessly
in the dark, to spin higher
when it all tornadoes
downward, the wind,
this wind, let me be wind,
let me keep asking
what’s up, what’s up,
O Lord, what on earth is up?
–Tarfia Faizullah
***
Bangladeshi American poet Tarfia Faizullah grew up in Midland, Texas. She earned an MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University program in creative writing, and her first book, Seam (2014), won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, as well as the Drake Emerging Writer Award. Faizullah’s honors and awards include an Associated Writers Program Intro Journals Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, a Copper Nickel Poetry Prize, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Margaret Bridgman Scholarship in Poetry. A Kundiman fellow, she lives in Detroit and is an editor for the Asian American Literary Review and Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series.
