A Pornography

Now, I know you can persuade an oyster
into creating. Freshwater nucleation: a false
center is created, then a pearl emerges from

⚬

a swarming of flesh. Once, in July, I was bit
by a lone wasp. Ma ran a cold quarter over
the pink fever stippling on the insides

⚬

of my limbs. I collected these remedies,
toward scarabs of vivid womanhood.
There is a protected body inside every armor.

⚬

The speckled yellow-green in her palm
like a tame canary. A lyric sharpness
reveals the lush and pale body of a pear.

⚬

Ma would then hand me the paring
knife: skin this perfectly; it is part of being
beautiful. Recently, I asked my friend,

⚬

ripened in conversation, after revealing
he reads my poems in morning light —
May I send you a nude?

⚬

ξ

Jai Hamid Bashir is an intergenerational Pakistani-American artist. Her work has recently appeared in POETRY Magazine, American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, MIZNA, Crazyhorse, Radar, Guernica Magazine,  Black Warrior Review, The Arkansas International, and others. She has received an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize. She graduated from Columbia University and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. https://www.jaihamidbashir.com/