Poem-a-Day - "Red-Lipped Poem" by Tarfia Faizullah

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March 16, 2022 

Red-Lipped Poem

Tarfia Faizullah

You only respond
to marrow
scooped clean.

You stare. I touch
your silk. Shiver. Some nights,
you let in a kiss abruptly

through the mask. Pant.
            Here, your bread,
sliced into neat warm ovals.

Whisper. It’s impossible. Is it
that you have nowhere
to go? No. Your family

loves you. But here you are
the only monster. The last
and first star: the one
in the clan who won’t stay put.

Tonight, you arrive;
you said you wouldn’t.
Here, a linen napkin;
we can't always afford it.

I do not always have
what you lope about
seeking. It isn’t so easy
to keep the harness buckled.
            Be still. Only we know
how this works.

Copyright © 2022 by Tarfia Faizullah. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 16, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“This poem was originally titled ‘Love Poem’ and began ‘Dear Beast.’”
Tarfia Faizullah

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018) and Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, she lives in Dallas.
Registers of Illuminated Villages
(Graywolf Press, 2018)


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Thanks to Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum: Poems (Knopf, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Listen to a Q&A about Shaughnessy’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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