My Body Count is 21 

Desperate for the glory of love, 

I said he’ll know the taste of my skin, 

eat at the table of my tongue. 

Now I give him 

a rigid back, a chilly chest, 

counting all the ways he doesn’t, 

all the the things he can’t, 

with twisted feet, 

and singed teeth, 

a steel wire in my throat. 

I shouldn’t have let him know! 

I shouldn’t have let him know! 

My body count is twenty one 

for every year I’ve been here. 

How else can this flashing nerve and mass 

thrum around the earth? 

He pictures twenty one shell-shuckers 

gutting me like a glistening pearl from the center of a clam. 

But I’m just an ant drowning in the honey of life. 

He’s another boy, with small eyes 

and honey on his lips. 

Oh I could’ve never loved him anyway, 

wretched and sexless, worst person in the world, 

Daughter of Cain, a wound between my legs, 

I scratch at it 

again 

and again.

Ellaha Pirzada 

I want 

I want to put my mouth around something 

Everybody’s asking for more, 

I give, give, give, 

I ask god if its okay; 

He says 

to be wanted is holy. 

To give is righteous. 

But just once in awhile 

when he’s too tired to notice 

and the day starts to stumble 

onto its last legs. 

I like to sit and play with it, 

put my mouth around its width 

and pretend I’m good at it. 

Every once in awhile 

I take 

and my hands come 

away 

white, 

feeding my appetite for brightness.

Ellaha Pirzada 

The End 

He says he’ll leave me for my sake 

fall on his sword, 

but the blade is at my throat, 

its my guts on the floor. 

I like the labor of the moment, 

how long it takes for the head of hair 

to fall between the legs, 

how the boulder at the top of the hill starts to roll down its own. 

We fought against it for so long, 

murmuring of the time well spent. 

But time’s a stepfather, he makes us fend for ourselves 

asking back for the hours 

we filled burying dead birds and burning logs 

the yellow night lying flat, 

how you felt inside my mouth, 

my arms curled around yours. 

I left the city in which I loved you, 

left my insides but took the sword 

I loved the moments, 

but there was nothing left to labor over.