Necrotic Spell of Fireworks By Saf

The Rising Phoenix Review

June 10

Necrotic Spell of Fireworks¹
trigger warning: sexual and racial violence

It rippled through the freeways,
masjids, schools, city halls, even TV
pornography where we were seized,
stripped naked, spread, searched,
penetrated while our countries were
bombshells, drone-stricken
by the president we threw a block party for in the prayer hall,
scooping abysses of ice-cream and puking, when us
girls, blossoming, began
to veil, became the city's virginal witches,
playing basketball in the neighborhood whose neighbors
were emptying out onto the streets, pushing
their organs in shopping carts, the starch stiffness
of abaya, pajamas silken underneath,
yelling each other's names to pass the ball, when our parents told us
to be nameless, bilkul khumoosh,
for the registry's grown
a vast spell of foreign letters and they're just starting
the fires, law-abiding citizens turned pyromaniacs watching our minarets burn,
martyring only pig heads and writing with
their blood, "you are as unclean to God as a pig is to you,"²
while my
sister and I lost ourselves somewhere shallow in the forest where
no one could watch us, cursing nonspecifically and colluding
with the Southern Hickory jinn to become beings
of fire and clay, combust
THIS MADDENING DENSITY
(though we both know we're not supposed to be here in the first place),
but between you & me,
now that
we're big unmagical fools,
failing our civic duties (cause I'm cute & gay),
we love sticking our heads out our window guillotine-style to smoke for
voyeuristic city lights
&
voyeuristic agents radicalizing our 8th grade classmates
as if Allah is watching,
and if anyone asks,
I gargle jargon like "subverting Western hegemony"
because… it's the basis of my exotic sex appeal

¹after "The Widening Spell of the Leaves"
₂ On 9/11/2021, someone left a pig's head and a sign that said this outside the Islamic Center of Greater Austin, where I went to private school.

By Saf

Biography:

Saf was born and raised in Austin, Texas. Their poetry is published or forthcoming in A Gathering of the Tribes, SPARK Magazine, and A La Moda. They were awarded the 2023 Fania Kruger Fellowship for social justice. They are the writing director of Saffron, a Central Texas based creative house that centers South Asian voices.