POETRY
Scheherazade Appears in a Drone Operator’s Dream
I want to see the tray of fresh loaves magnified but the controls are frozen and all the blue lips
I’ve seen before end of shift come back trembling to kiss my savior fingers when nonplussed I
grip tighter my skinny latte when she whispers leave it for tea a Maghrebi recipe I strain she
laughs like sterling silver on bone China and softly says Maghreb means the Muslim west and
recounts the ingredients green tea peppermint orange blossom water sugar she pours and I
drink while the sewing machine of her voice runs along the seam of life beyond life the
moment of strike inside my night stitched with night outside there is the same racket of buyers
and sellers a market bloated with profits I hear when I press for the explosion scene
Shadab Zeest Hashmi is the winner of numerous awards and distinctions for her poetry and essays. Her books include two poetry collections and a volume of essays and poetry titled Ghazal Cosmopolitan which has been praised by Marilyn Hacker as “a marvelous interweaving of poetry, scholarship, literary criticism and memoir.” Comb, her latest book, is a lyric memoir selected by Julia Bouwsma (the Poet Laureate of the state of Maine) as the Best Hybrid Book 2019. Zeest Hashmi’s poetry has been featured in festivals such as the Seeds of Peace concert in Portland (US), and in Museum exhibits such as the Victorian Radicals at the Birmingham Museum (UK) and a Photography/Film screening at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester (UK) in 2024, among other places.