Irteqa Khan

Irteqa Khan (she/her) is a Muslim-Canadian writer and poet from Peshawar, Pakistan. She is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at York University. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in Homology Lit, Erato Magazine, ANMLY, Honey Literary, The Hyacinth Review, Five South, and Aôthen Magazine, among others. Irteqa’s debut poetry chapbook, rēza rēza, was published with Gap Riot Press in 2020.

dâstân diptych

the majazi is the haqeeqi

to lose everything to flowers

 

is unseparating the humanity

from the bravura of the flesh

 

revolutionary blood empathizing

with hands holding heavy water

 

to pull what hurts out

from loving’s dirty foot

 

one warm word is

a costly rare element

 

admittance into the garden

when the night has seen your mind

 

is more generosity than

a khush uncontrollable wind

 

and my difference in yours

is the sword lily and

 

 

 

the nest is also a prison

so is the villainy of ancestry

 

but my desire is angular

a wielding piece

 

teaching me an unsplitting cure

for metropolitan maladies

 

before creeping normality

enter: a waxing here i am

 

powersuiting in animal teeth

and calibrating my tragedy

 

 

not the seizure of nature

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

of burning in other ways

a thing that ages beautifully

is pearls becoming rivers

 

in the light of broad eyes

while a diet of wounds marches

 

amongst sinners of the system

these womb relationships say

 

together and teeth-achingly

means the heart is a country too

 

a perpetual occasion of hope

a self-accusing spirit

 

is becoming human

snatching and wriggling softly

 

a principled mutiny

humming to the dastoor-e-dunya

 

visibilizing a chaos theory

when the ambience is palpable

 

 

 

i heard some body in me chant

and to see is to love

 

t r a n s c e n d e n t a l

residual, reactive, rangrez

 

like angel numbers at breakfast

recite: finally happy now?

 

that unforgiving child smiles

at the rictus of the world

 

so as to tighten the salt of seams

under a provisory name

 

 

This poem previously appears in rēza rēza (Gap Riot Press, 2020).