Underneath
In July 2009, a Sudanese journalist, Lubna al-Hussein, and a group of 12 other women in Khartoum, Sudan were arrested for wearing trousers and sentenced to 40 lashes each for committing an act of “indecency.”
The butterflies of my headscarf
are pilgrim worms that have always crawled up
the laddered gloom of my vocal cords.
And by the strident testimony of my heels
the life I walk is half dead on the blindness of scales
while the immature conquerors of our alien triangles
feed on the generous familiarity of our circles.
Tell me,
How many shrouds of laughter and wrath should we stitch
so the trampled body of this silence is never vertical
again?
The flowers of our drowsy dresses no longer wish to await
a mating wind that scatters motherless dreams
on the dizzy denial of an earth
that can offer equal warmth only to horizontal feet
and avenge the uneven passion of the pair that
treads on her.
Skirts unite the stupor of legs
For trousers to divide and rule.
Maryam Ala Amjadi is an Iranian writer, translator, and researcher, and a City of Asylum fellow at Black Mountain Institute. Her latest book, Where Is the Mouth of That Word? (Selected Poems) was published by Poetrywala. Her short story “The Ice Seller of Hell” won the 2024 Elizabeth Alexander Award and will be published in Meridians (Duke University Press).
Maryam is participating in the 2024 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl in Reno. Don’t miss her session on October 12, 2024, at the Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl.
Double Down blogger photo courtesy of Maryam Ala Amjadi.