scene

a windowless apartment. somehow, a pathos survives, cluttering around the white-walled living room.

centered is gorgeous red Pakistani rug, pinned down by two loveseats, still in their plastic cover after twenty years of marriage. the overhead light is cool white.

             downstairs and down the street, although the street doesn’t matter to this story, is the store.

similarly cluttered, an Upper West Side convenience store in 2008. there is a narrow deli, a machine that slices meat, a loud radio, and an aisle of packaged snacks. metal doors lead to the basement.

time is spent between these two spaces.

cicadas in the apartment I

I cannot have sex right now! I am busy
thinking about bugs. how cold
they must have been to confine
themselves to my apartment. when the earth dropped
in just six hours, and the red ones cannot reproduce indoors,
but can enjoy, in clusters, the west facing sun      
through the window  
while they are still able to do so.

the day will rear back in, and when it does,
I will convince the bugs out. all of them, and their webbed glass wings.
I fear I am unable to perform
violence nor gentleness, I think,
eying the bug on the lace shower curtain. I know
someone who was once alive. organs
clung to the threading. open
insides. hostile
indoors. my pelvis
and images of men
who have been
alive
and will be     . palms
pressed to the skull
of an insect.
cold tile—
    spring

cicadas in the apartment II

I am always ending the story short. like
an overturned nest       knocked by wind
eggs     scrambling the
mother will return to massacre.
but will be alive, baying
                 over the concrete. but I am rambling. I am    what I am trying
to say is:
they are alive—the bugs         all thousands of them,
slid from my apartment the next easy morning as if to
chide me for melodrama. I

(a large, fleshy thing)              am always reducing myself
to the plight of women: indoors          anxious
to tug the knob            so not to disturb
the cracks in the wood. all the life      in there:
carpenter ants, just burgeoning wasps, and those
                 ghosts who have slammed that frame without care
yowling after the wife
en route to toss the trash.

                 these are all the things I fear. life,
the potential, the memory.

I was trying to avoid cruelty, I cry,
kneeling at the window’s glass. and I hear the bugs reply
in their high, monotoned chorus: to
acquiesce is not a form of power,
but another shred of cuticle
peeled back until dry,
stinging only at the moment of detachment. plucked skin
                 —yes, that is skin, and that is my body it was attached to, and there is a hard,
red wound under that slow,
frequent pilling.          the bugs

were born clawing
in herds out the earth. knowing
that a house sparrow,
                 (a creature so pleasant I have paid it no mind)
will take its fill. unhinge its wings,
                        and soar with a body in the mouth. I saw this happen, so I know
it is real.          stained glass wings: an oasis
in concrete sprawl. the grass
chimes on,      metallic

buying new school clothes

I have just finished tearing off my lips
and am rushing to greet Mother at the door.
she asks if I want to go to TJ Maxx.
I squawk something gnarled, unable to enunciate
due to the jagged gap in my face. she laughs,
Don’t be like that, you need new clothes for school.

I take her hand and walk to the next room.
alone sits Father in the living room, shirtless on a long black chaise.
his pepper chest curls above his beer belly. his face is pregnant, he looks straight ahead.
he does not acknowledge my body in the entrance, does not notice my lack of mouth.
you know, beti, I would never hurt anyone.
not even your mother.

I exit the room.

now Mother is standing in the apartment hallway, holding up two shopping bags.
don’t tell your father about these bags!
he is unruly when we spend the money.
I am glad my lips are gone, and far from scabbing over. I do not like
to make mistakes. I recall a time
before I had resigned to calamity. I’d beg for reason,
and gnaw my lip,
as I did with my cuticles
before I picked them to nubs.

and Mother is still before me, a bag in each hand.
her holey orange shirt hangs off her skin.
It has worn her since before she conceived,
and it has stretched,
or she has shrunk—,
she looks so tiny in this house.

and I grunt a nod, and tuck the bags under my shirt.

I must cross the living room to get to my bedroom. Father is
in the living room, and he has tripled in size.
his receding hair tickles the ceiling, he has tripled
in size, but his eyes
are still small.

my teeth fit perfect like exposed brick and
I clench until one dislodges.
I toss
the front one in his direction.
his elephant ears perk and his body
clamors. I pry out another, and another,
and hurl them both,
and repeat the process.

he is further now, lifting the couch, running
his bloated hand over the hardwood floor.
I am almost to the bedroom door.
but the plastic crinkles
under my shirt.
he hears me.
now he runs in my direction,
shaking the furniture, the ceramic pots, the silverware rumbles
off its surfaces.

I release a sound.

he does not hear it. Mother appears
and pleads, It was me, I bought it.
so I sound harder, I push myself between them.
they thrash against each other, 

but their hands push through me.
I had chewed off my arms, my lips, my chest, my
                 am just eyes and ears.

I’m bad at cutting mangos

it’s tough    around the seed
always too much flesh or
a knife, right into the–



                 /

                 when her son collapsed, Umma took the double decker train to Long Island everyday
                 work, visitation, and always again


                 post-op, fresh staples to his scalp. I haven’t heard a sound like that

                                  more and more painkillers, and a tolerance still so high


                 /

when he collapsed, he was cutting me a mango. I asked him do it, because I wanted him

off the couch.

                 when the thud, I wanted

not to notice         greased black hair, his head

                                                                                      streaming the kitchen tiles

                 /

anti-seizing medication from a clear orange cylinder. when papa finally visited,
he stood by the door.
I have seen him cry twice: over the death
of a fish, and his mother.

            /


                                                                                                       ice melting in a short plastic cup,
                                                                                      I am witness to such tenderness

*

Mina Khan is a Korean-Pakistani American poet from NYC. Her writing spans across nations, generations, to discuss ecology, cyclicality, violence, tenderness, and the everyday. Her work has appeared in AAWW’s The Margins, Tupelo Quarterly, Epiphany Magazine, and more. Khan holds a BA from Wesleyan University, MFA from Columbia University, and is a Tin House alum. Her debut, Night Shift in Perfect English, is out now.