Mehnaz Sahibzada

QUIET

A red bird sat squat
beneath my mailbox
like a bomb about
to explode. It gazed up
at me as though it knew
I was capable of falling.
I opened the slot.
It was all junk mail.
The bird shifted tersely
on its plume, waiting to
be left alone. The year
had been a surge of face masks—
a market virus, the
wrath of turgid cops.
My nerves were shot.
I wondered if the bird
was injured or tired or maybe
hiding from the heatwave
of the afternoon.
I sifted through coupons
craving silence.
I blamed noise,
sheep, and those shiny
media pundits. That fiend
on a plane who once
barked, Girl, you need
to brush your hair.
The criminal who told me,
It’s easy to pretend
and the militant who shouted,
You don’t worship hate
enough, and the truth is
I don’t know how to talk about
cynicism. Five years ago,
I decided to be as moon
as night. Now
my memories of injustice
sleep inside a coven
where innocents burn
like cloistered suns.
The witches croon,
On the fractures
inside the skull of America
they’ve built a stripmall
that will get raided by
monks. I want to know how
this red bird sits mute when
the year has been so loud.
Just last week I thought
I saw the same bird
nuzzling its head against
a weeping black tree that had
been reminded how
little we understood
when a postman walked
by wearing a veil,
his bag of junk mail
chanting, Buy two, get
one free, and the city
strangling itself so kindly
as though every
mean bruise were an act
of love, and the
roses suddenly growing
backbones and
shouting, We can no
longer cultivate quiet.


Mehnaz reads "Quiet":



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Mehnaz confesses: "'Quiet' is an introvert’s response to the loudest year in history."

MEHNAZ SAHIBZADA was born in Pakistan and raised in Los Angeles. She is a 2009 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, such as Liminality, Moira, The Literary Hatchet, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Pedestal Magazine, and Strange Horizons. Her first full-length collection, My Gothic Romance, was published in April 2019 by Finishing Line Press. A high school English teacher, she lives in southern California. To learn more about Mehnaz, visit her at www.poetmehnaz.com.

Mehnaz Sahibzada

MUSE NOIR

Every time I write, I sense his hand sliding
up my thigh. Blackening each metaphor, he hammers
my good-girl past until it shatters like a glass mug.

I can't shrug him away. One night in Lahore
when I was fifteen, he climbed beside me in bed,
fastened a palm around my wrist. It was the only

time I saw his face, the square brown chin
and espresso-stained grin, the cunning smile that
colonized my head. I said, when I get back

to California, I'll grind you up like a bean. But
he just waved a palm-sized cross and proposed.
I said yes, of course. Still he stood me up

for prom. I wore the ruby dress with the side
slit and waited on the porch. Waited and waited
until my thoughts took off their heels and like a corpse

stood still. For months he did not show. I spent
the evenings sketching black tulips, drinking coffee–
the café the one place he was likely to be–the air

prayer-whipped with the nuns who liked to visit,
play chess in the corner. There the lighting was
lunar. One night, reading a ghost story in the back,

my thoughts woke electric. I put on lipstick,
pressed it on even too. His hand gripped my neck.
The fear delicious, the joy rose up so fast,

I couldn't move. If I stay, he said,
you’ll carry delusions, make mad like
Edgar Allan Poe. I told him I wasn't the kind

of girl who wanted a rose. He laughed at my quiver,
handed me a silver ring, something gothic. We
didn't kiss. It would have been uncouth

with the nuns watching. But the verdict
was in. My conscience mugged by a thief, I was
wife to spinning dark, to gunfire on the street.


Mehnaz reads "Muse Noir":



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Mehnaz confesses: "Since the muse is often imagined as a positive feminine figure in western mythology, I wrote this poem to explore its opposite: a morally ambiguous, masculine muse. To engage this dark urban muse, the speaker of "Muse Noir" transforms herself into a femme fatale of sorts."

MEHNAZ SAHIBZADA was born in Pakistan and raised in Los Angeles. She is a 2009 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow in Poetry. Her short story, "The Alphabet Workbook", appeared in the August 2010 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Her poetry chapbook, Tongue-Tied: A Memoir in Poems, was published in 2012 by Finishing Line Press.