Animals: “anguine” by Irteqa Khan
anguine
anguine.
keep a place for me once i reach
the forest self-serious molten processual
tonguing my anger, briefly animal
if you look closely— the materials of this indelicacy
are infinitesimal: search intensity luring the heart,
not eyes, into longing working on lifting.
scaling (i) scrunching (ii) sidewinding (iii) sloughing (iv) shimmering (v)
i’m in some palace entertaining fugitive gods—
call it primitive containment or a primal trial
perhaps to prefer the hunger over the feast.
how do i feel beautiful when i slither hideously
to my prayers tonight, my poems tomorrow
looking like something i always did,
with light from powers that be somewhere inside me.
now there’s not much time left in the forest
my last night there-then/here-now i lean into
private growth a biting one circling in
secret from your venom the relief of
being discovered when i overfill
as a tapestry of a thousand pivots.
About Irteqa Khan
Irteqa Khan (she/her) is a Muslim-Canadian poet of color. She holds an Honours degree in History and an MA in Political Studies from the University of Saskatchewan. Irteqa writes primarily about the psychospiritual, cultural, and linguistic gradations of diasporic living. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in literary journals such as L’Éphémère Review, The Brown Orient, Spring Magazine, Homology Lit, and Anomaly among others. Irteqa’s debut chapbook, rēza rēza, was published with Gap Riot Press in 2020.