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Peach

By Kazim Ali

I place the peach gummy on my tongue

I have come to Boulder, Colorado with an agenda which is what

It is my intention to rewrite the cosmic legislation which governs time and space to better allow for what I am for now calling the anarchy of sense

Singular

These sensate oceans open inside no one drowns no one has forgotten initial wombs when we breathed not liquid but ether

These shapes require no ablutions

Spring my third season own me

I am brought from the color blue from the color green I am most comfortable in pure abstraction

Pattern of rug etching in stone all the senators phone me

They want my vote, for the wind, for the sun

I propose the peach

Peach the god of sun and gold

Who came in my mouth and breathed me

Down the mountain trail come running the runners

Clad in blue and green

Their intention is beyond blood and breath really it is thunder

We are gathered together in the world in the weirdest shapes

So thrust now in the place the country ends and the country begins I am once more consulted on these affairs

What do I know about the life of the body or the life of the mind

Except that there is no spirit without these two

Now they say the president is coming for what

Build a wall, banish the butterflies, criminalize my bloodstream

But I am in possession of the extremest of filibusters

To bust you from your peachless perch

We will have this wonder

We will have this one day of climbing up and looking over

To where the continental divide slings wide every charm

I will reach for you I swear I will not leave you without peach

I am no reliable indicator of for example whether a certain food is spicy or not on account of my Indian heritage

Now where were we again oh yes the glow of peach shake the snow globe of peach

Now in the rosy flesh we are held

I hang up on the senator

Decline all the appointments to Secretary of Swish, assistant director of the office of homonational normalizing dumb-fuckery, ambassador to the state of big box cul-de-sac impossibility

My radical revision is to wander off the trail

To be lost in the back lots of the old Naropa campus

To try to find my way back to creek by tarot card and divining rod

And may all the presidents of walls and muck and shit and drones flying in on the wind be empeached

Swallowed by peach

Seized by the spirit of the almighty peach

Make peach

Find a peachful solution

Oh hi, mister president, go in peach
Added: Friday, November 3, 2017  /  Used with permission.
Kazim Ali
Photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones.

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom to Muslim parents of Indian, Iranian, and Egyptian descent. He received a BA and MA from the University of Albany-SUNY and an MFA from New York University. His books encompass several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays is Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. Ali is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College. His new book of poems, Inquisition, and a new hybrid memoir, Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies, will both be released in 2018.

Kazim Ali is a Featured Poet for Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2018.

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