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.