Elegy with Her Red-Tipped Fingers
In two weeks I’ll cross two oceans wide
as the funeral processions to your grave:
bearded men continue to thumb plastic
prayer beads beside your sheet-swaddled
body. Grandmother, here in Virginia, I cradle
the phone to my cheek & stand over the dark
skillet, waiting to turn over another slice
of bacon I will slip into my mouth, knowing
well that this sin, too, like so many others,
dissolves once I will it to. Allah-er borosha,
I mumble to your daughter: It’s Allah’s will:
words I know cannot fill even this half-empty
suitcase spilled out across hardwood floor: color
of those low, yellow plains of West Texas Mother
sobs past on her way to the airport, compelling
her body faster towards yours before it disappears
into its bamboo-bordered grave. Once, I stood
over your other granddaughter’s grave while
cicadas hummed the sky clean. Once, I wanted
to be the white wind shirred across any open
field. Once, I lay beside you, a child unmoving,
a body slowly filling with feathers: together
we listened to Grandfather’s breathing, labored
against white mosquito netting—& now, you
too, are dead, two weeks too early. Now, after
another scythe-thin rickshawallah pedals
my ocean-tugged body across those severed
Dhaka streets, & after I have slipped into his dark
fingers a few extra takahs, & after I have made
my way past storefronts choked with glittering
stacks of gold bangles, & after another tailor
has slipped from his neck the faded measuring
tape, & after he has pulled it taut across my back,
around my leg—who, if not you, will ask me
to tear free the folded fabric from its paper
parcel to finger the soft silk? Who will ask
of me its worth, its weight? I kneel, add another
razor, plastic-capped, to this slowly-filling suitcase:
lotion, mosquito repellent, tape recorder: items
on a list I draw thick, black lines through. But
it won’t be your voice I rewind over, fast-forward
through. It won’t be your hair you’ll sit beside
the window to rub henna into. It won’t be
your red-tipped fingers I’ll press a jar into:
small gift you won’t have asked me to bring.
It won’t be your veins I’ll notice, too late: fluvial
ribbons rising stark & sudden through the silk-thin
skin of your hands that won’t turn over another page
of newsprint dark with Bangla: language I speak
now to your grieving daughter, this language
the sari-cinched bodies of women were once
broken open for. Put up your hair, your stern voice
won’t admonish. Please let me see your lovely face. 
Aubade Ending with the Death of a Mosquito
Elegy with Her Red-Tipped Fingers
Ramadan Nocturne