Tom

Amar Shah · Tom

She pulled back the curtain.
It blew over her face.
"I know you're there!
You think I don't know?"

and answered back a voice
from bushes just beyond the fence,
encroaching nearer to the wood:

Isn't it more important
that you know
that you
are there?

She swept a curl over her ear,
wriggling loose
from a sloppy bun,
the worn beige silk
neglecting to cover
the curve of her breast.

"It's ok, it's ok.
Tom,
I've known a long time.
I can
actually
see you,"

and carried back the voice,
resolute,
authoritative,
young, confident,
inflected by French, Dutch, German.
It echoed cross the plain of sand
expanding wide on every sight:

And what does it mean, to
allow others to see you?

"Tom, you can knock it off!"
she huffed,
teeth baring bright,
salutations to
the fullest full-moons,
the river-cancer moons.

"Come to me, Tom,
I want you, I love you!
Let's not play games anymore,"

and came again the voice,
the Father's cold and laughing voice,
high, clear, studied—
intellectual
—and therefore spake the voice,
the cosmic, demi-urgent voice,
loosed from black holes yet uncharted
beyond the reach of space...time:

Interesting.
Very interesting
that you would say that,
when you
don't know me at all.

the riding master fears too little for his head

"your royal highness
your royal highness
I ask your pardon
I ask your mercy

"I am but
your humble servant
in your presence
only such
as pleases you

"your highness please
don't think me insolent
or if you do
dispose some patience
mercy your grace
to an old fool
raised in stables
born stinking of shit

"your highness
please

"this powerful beast
is waiting
to be ridden

so get.your.arse

in the saddle
and let's GO"

How to eat a croissant

Someone once gave me a gift,
and before he gave it to me, said,

"This is a gift.
Which means that it is yours completely.
And you are completely free
to do with it as you wish."

And then he gave me a turkey feather.

(He was inspired to give me a turkey feather
by some members of a Native American community
whom he had met long ago in his life and career.)

I said thank you and
accepted the turkey feather
from this man
whom I had loved and respected
And that evening I gave the

turkey feather to my
four-year-old daughter,
who squealed to receive
something so big,
so natural
and so joyfully a part of this earth.

She destroyed it in the creative play of unfettered childhood.

I think about gifts sometimes,
about the guilts we lay over them
when we fail to let go of the gift
even as it passes out of our hands,
into the hands of whom we love,
how our generosity fails to launch,
how we come short of giving
and fall back on taking.

I think about gifts
when I think about the French,
and how it troubles you to let go of your gifts,
those you concocted,
those you perfected,
those you plundered, strangled, stole,
and now clutch tight,
griping at us who would receive them.

I

I'm sorry
I couldn't help myself
when I was a baby
they said I was a boy
and everything kinda
escalated
from there

confessional

I have a secret
can I tell you my secret?
a revolting
disgusting secret
are you ready?
I have worms

I have worms
in my digestive canal
I've taken pills
to drive them away
to eliminate them
to flush them
waste
from my bowels
into the earth's

I've taken pills
but the worms come back
they wriggle at night
I want to puke
I think I saw one
that I pulled out over the john

I have worms
they won't stay away
because also I have
a nine year old child
light of my life
star in my sky
dirty long talons
that go into her mouth

I am a loving father
a doting father
an intimate father
traipsing through the vines of Eden
calling, my child,
Come, where are you
return to me
let's eat
It's
dinnertime

I am a subaltern father
a colonized father
a queer
attached
mother-and-father father
I won't push my child away
I won't hold her down and remake her body
I won't place her under my knife
I am not Abraham
I am not white
god made me of stone

~

So I make space
I hold space
the space that you occupy
I sit with this discomfort
in my rectum

Worms
your days are numbered
I am coming for you
just not today

bully

my dick at eastern cross