The patio at this bar births brown ladybugs
& I’m burning my mouth for fun. On the edges
of desi women’s lips : milk souring, some liquor
to help us forget. Cities in America & I
am tired. Villages back home—I squint
& almost belong—& train cars rattle, peopled,
my god, limbs everywhere. Call this day scant & hear
the letters wrong. Call me foreign
& god have I complied. Women I’d call sister,
I see you. There’s soot coating rails & the heat
is our house & I can’t rid this book
of my life, & we’re all coins left in fountains
making language of strife. Alina’s name is a song
& she knows it, & I’m veering political
over cardamom at the bar, I gesture with my hands
& it is universal, I ask : what are we stained by
if not our love of men?
Where do we go at sunset? Who sees us
on the ground in the dark, clouds of dust
in our wake, shuffling to or from ourselves? My mouth
is on fire & I light the thing backwards
& Alina says today is the day of three-hundred hugs
just between us. She’s got a bottle
in her hand & the posture
of an immigrant & I won’t rid this book
of our lives. This poem is about
recognition. This poem is about wishful
thinking. Women, I want it to be
believable : that we leave the bar, the sky stupid
with gold. That no one follows us home.