Afternoon Chai

Watch how slowly I dispel starstuff clung to ribcage.

First: Be political. Then: Okay stop.

As it rises it is the dust of the ones we did not cremate.

Religion forbids it. Earth entombs our entire dead.

Sea when necessary. My palate for death grows finer

like a nose hungry for famine & my brownness is unexpected

in expected places, like: smell this tea, is there enough skin on top

& be exotic with your jewelry you have an entire culture to uphold

within a nose piercing the galaxies of mehndi on your palms.

Nobody asks what I want

for myself. Maybe I abhor columns, minarets, journalism,

arranged marriages, music that repeats itself,

skinny jeans, whirlwind of fashions & poached elephants.

Did you ever stop to think I hate headless anythings?

That the threat to existence is other existence brushing up against it,

blowing the smoke rising from its china cup, in the way bodies do

when we need to do mass somethings to those bodies to evaporate them.

Ask me what version of brown I am today: American or

Pakistani or

Indian?

My answer will almost always be the same, airstrikes

killed the other killed the other killed the other.

I am cooling off the rage.