“Why be creative? Why think critically? Because it matters how I care for you.”
— Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Samandar Ghaus is a Pakistani-American poet, gardener, and community organizer currently working on an MFA at Indiana University. They are a VONA/Voices of Our Nation fellow, a Tin House workshop alum, and the recipient of the 2020 Vera Meyer Strube Poetry Prize. Their work can be found on poets.org, Poetry Daily, and poiesis, and they currently serve as Poetry Editor for Indiana Review.
Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Saami, what poems have you brought for us today?
ELEGY FOR QUEER MUSLIMS PARTYING IT UP IN THE AFTERLIFE
Imagine who we’ll meet
on the dance floor: that one girl
from Sunday school who you just knew
was a lesbian — score one
for the queers living it up
in Jannah, listen, it was intuition —
the youth organizer you met
at a community vigil and didn’t
even know was Muslim, auntie-Zareen-
from-the-masjid’s eldest theybie and, hold up,
auntie Zareen’s here, too (whaaattt!!), listen listen, the gays
and the girls are dancing to Abida Parveen and Lil Nas X,
Haneen tearing it up, Gina breaking
it down, our Sufi foremotherfathers
twisting to the beat — there’s no telling
(no need, no secret) who’ll hike up
their starchy shalwar to give us
a little bhangra in the sun-center
of the floor, party on in this most godly
hour, which is every hour in the universe
we live in, which is the life we deserve(d), most holy
flower-boi, tender bb, all our friends who pledged
themselves family at the janaza for family
when family died a white rose
a flag a moon and star a plane ticket
an expired phone card in our necks, remember
all our friends at the janaza for home,
when home was the ex we couldn’twouldn’t
go back to, when there was nowhere
to go back where you came from, after the janaza
for iraqafghanistanpakistansomaliasudan
yemeniranpalestineegyptnigeriaindiachinaburmasaudi,
at the janaza for Ahmed’s beloved friend,
at the janaza for Omar’s beloved friend,
at the janaza for Lama’s beloved friend,
at the janaza for our past selves swimming out
to sea as if to make ourselves metaphor,
wallahi we swore we’d be the ocean touching
all those (places, people) we feared we’d never belong
to again, good lord remember the ache,
when the heart couldn’t make it past customs
doomed to extra security screenings
in our homeless itineraries, ya rabb
there’s only so long we could linger
in the airports of our lives, dodging
all the cops in immigration hell, inna lillahi,
(after)life comes for us all —
and yallah! now the ache in our knees
as we drop it down low to each other’s fearless
ululations, our bravery sleeping
in the self-care room while the beat goes
on and we pitch ourselves through the dark,
careening bodies under the lote tree,
constellating the collective groove
of the highest gay heaven, listen,
after life is more life, and it’s the life,
we’re living it up[biatch]!, rebirthed in our twirling
wrists and hundred-mile-an-hour hips
shaking like poplar leaves in a Black Sea breeze —
oh, home is a shadow shimmying
between our bodies in the Jannat-al-dancefloor,
imagine it now, how when we die,
we’ll show up to greet each other at the ga(y)tes
of eternity dressed in sequins and keffiyehs,
starshining solidarity free like the best queer clubs
on earth, while the rest of the world —
discoball memory on which we scatter our light —
spins below, looking up at us
to find their way.
You've been listening to the poetry of Samandar Ghaus on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.