R U S H D A  R A F E E K  |  Monsoon 2014

Monsoon

Then the slept-lace of a crescent fell
upon my hair, how else would you know
it’s me? Usually with this hand makes 
you perceive the frail of an eyelash 
when weighing basil wasn’t easy.

In your mother’s kitchen, seemed above 
the crow— shrieking in its perch 
to live a blade through vanilla pods
you would hold yourself taut until it lifts
the gritty crumbs grown into a puddle.

How the rain came violent. Like locusts. My
hips singing in your arms. A boy stood
stilled as if marked by burns. How we cared little
and the hymnal weaved into us like a gown 
blooming unpetaled.





Song of the Fruit Fly

Do not ask
once more why I consume this bud
of dawn why incite for your grasp.

Of longing once sullying
like the dazzle of bees in my ear you word
the sound of dew.

Do not ask once more 
why I relish the taut mellow above
soughing when you held me just once.

It was nothing
those volumes , the ache, low
the way a fruit fly lifts its head 
in the cusp of nectarine somehow
impure with song drunk of sin.






Blood Moon

What’s happening is this: April wave lanterns 
sequined golden, the way
plums cradle in the writhe of taste, emphatic even 
its breathing pluvial. 

These traces; urgent like the recitatives 
of nervous singing heavier than the ink
carved in the witch of your sleep.

Our mouths stun and thread 
into each other, jostling and I want nothing
else in. As if studded, birds gather 
under the constellation perhaps you
mumble a slip, a revel
and I river; swim a moon in its body.

*

Rushda Rafeek was born in 1990. Her poems and fiction pieces have been published in The Rumpus, Monkey Bicycle, Helter Skelter, and Inspired by Tagore, among other print and online publications. She also contributes to the Sri Lankan magazine ARTRA occasionally.