I am body, lonely prey
You, a wave, warrior tribe.
We are a battle fought
night after night on
porous borders, sound
of one hand slapping
sleepless grounds, worn out –
posts of sheets where blood –
sucking toes the line.
Majoritarian macchar* versus
embattled khatmal,* I am
hounded by sirens, marooned
by yet another dig, in
what’s left over of my skin.
macchar ( mosquito) and khatmal ( bedbug) are slang for Sunni and Shia
Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, essayist, author, editor and translator. he has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry. Her work features in numerous literary journals, including Poetry International Rotterdam, The Adirondack Review, The Wire, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blaze Vox, Scroll, The Daily O, Cafe Dissensus, Guftugu, Pratik, Gallerie International, Coldnoon, VAYAVYA, The Bangalore Review, Madras Courier, etc. Her Urdu/Hindi poetry appears in the anthology Raushniyan(2018). Her poetry collections are Peripheries (2015) Pointillism (2017) and Date Palms (2017). Naz is a regular contributor to Dawn, Poetry Editor and columnist at The Sunflower Collective, editor of the journal City, as well as the founder of rekhti.org, a site dedicated to contemporary Urdu poetry by women. Shehnaz, a biography on her mother's life is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in 2019. www.trancelucence.net.