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).