At the concrete salon my hair is split like an archive, hungry beige

latex sectioning the name of a country.  I file through genealogy

& find the canvas is cousins with the uvula, both carry ears of my

dead.  Both yellow & rimmed in frankincense.

On Olaya Rd the sun tears at the seams & pours feathers down

my throat.  I scalpel my diaphragm for evidence & find my braid

in a diluted soap jar.  An atomized elegy.

I sold my canines for gasoline, stashed them behind an eye socket

in solar permutation.  I submit visa applications & aspirate a rib

in offering. Bomikazi ululates on the empire & I am

daughtered into possibility.  My hair swollen with smoke.

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Jood AlThukair is a researcher tracing oral narratives, women’s memory practices, and the shifting ecologies of the desert. Working across (anti)archives through bilingual and ethno-poetic methods, she explores how stories endure, erode, and reassemble. Jood is the founder and lead curator of the Khaleeji Women’s Library & Archive (KWLA), a community-led library, research lab, and alternative archival practice. She is also a Rhodes Scholar (2022) and holds an MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation from the University of Oxford.