The Poetry Project

Four Poems

Tenaya Nasser-Frederick

Burlesque Blood

for Mohammed and Bahaar

I’m gonna write for you what you can’t yet

the blood

and you’ll write for me the kabob

I never cared

I love seeing it in your mouth

I’ll write a topless violet

scrubbing the tile

in the airbnb

I’ll write it so funny you can

cut measured lengths from spools

I’ll stand for the photo of

glossy blood

unstamped

on the bathroom floor

I won’t make a clown of you

I’ll laugh with you

at the blood of healing

I’ll write Khartoum so you

can say Gaza w/o saying Khartoum

I’ll direct my remarks to

the Rem Temple and you pay attention

to the Third Temple

we’re gonna do what’s never been done

we’re gonna be each other’s clothes

so Dave can thank you through me

and Brenda thank me through you.

I’ll write of people who can write me into

mine

so let me write your obligatory camp

you can be a language poet

you write your mirror in

Rapid Defense Force

so I can write the bayonet

and be self-hating

I’ll write the spear tattooed

on your arm

and send it up

send it through

I will write that I

love you more

than the sisterhood of the

traveling pants

I’m still waiting for your bemused line

about chips

for when you disappear

and when you disappear

Hebron

The waste nets sag in the

clay

all tangled beneath

the eyes

tugging the nights of Tel

Aviv + New York +

Jakarta

entangle yourself—

without tough words

time contracts to center-

gag

privilege to center

haunts the camp

and fills words

running late from rain

with libel

calling our love dirty

in a dirty sky

Life is Precious Thank God

We rapid age every day

Palestine is there where it’s not there

Violence isn’t real;

dies then greets; collapses then

studs; marries you with knitted brow; it dies

then it greets you with; oh god the power of a

sphere that scales from fingertip to skyline;

cities flooded by mirror

I want to look at you all over I want to feel

every part as you; and can’t speak of

but only point

Noah’s Pool Game in my Dream: Detained at Camp David

Esfandyar why do we

dream so blond?

a green cloth

is draped over the

cloud

I've hedged

volunteering

for the present

4 the present

and foreseeable future

blonds fix the cables

of our feeling

the halakhic of the

unsaid

whose cuts stilt in

drumskin buzzer

ancient Phrygian eyes

annihilated eyes

ruptures in such

brinkmanship as

composite foreignness

noncardinal negations

the Second Thomas

Shoal on pegs that

looked like this

#278 – Fall 2024

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