Women’s History Month continues with this week’s Monday poem by Fatimah Asghar.
WWE
Here’s your auntie, in her best gold-threaded shalwaar
kameez, made small by this land of american men.
Everyday she prays. Rolls attah & pounds the keema
at night watches the bodies of these glistening men.
Big and muscular, neck full of veins, bulging in the pen.
Her eyes kajaled & wide, glued to sweaty american men.
She smiles as guilty as a bride without blood, her love
of this new country, cold snow & naked american men.
“Stop living in a soap opera” yells her husband, fresh
from work, demanding his dinner: american. Men
take & take & yet you idolize them still, watch
your auntie as she builds her silent altar to them—
her knees fold on the rundown mattress, a prayer to WWE
Her tasbeeh & TV: the only things she puts before her husband.
She covers bruises & never lets us eat leftovers: a good wife.
It’s something in their nature: what america does to men.
They can’t touch anyone without teeth & spit
unless one strips the other of their human skin.
Even now, you don’t get it. But whenever it’s on you watch
them snarl like mad dogs in a cage—these american men.
Now that you’re older your auntie calls to say he hit
her again, that this didn’t happen before he became american.
You know its true & try to help, but what can you do?
You, little Fatimah, who still worships him?
Fatimah Asghar is the author of After (YesYes Books, 2015). She’s a teaching artist at Young Chicago Authors and lives in Chicago. A nationally touring poet, performer, educator and writer, her work has appeared in many journals, including POETRY Magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets and many others. Her work has been featured on new outlets like PBS, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. In 2011 she created Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first Spoken Word Poetry group, REFLEKS, while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-genocidal countries. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Her chapbook After came out on Yes Yes Books fall 2015. She is the writer of Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Currently she is an MFA candidate at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
Tags: The Monday Poem
