This REFUSAL poem was originally accepted by Beloit Poetry Journal but was withdrawn by the author in protest.
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It is every Arab woman’s job to want to be beautiful.
&
in the house we speak 3 languages but beauty’s the 1st. baba splays hours
shaving his face & smearing cologne on his thorax. mama sits on the toilet,
razing her hair of texture from root to tip. me in front of the mirror, knuckles
smudged with ash, brows unindustrialized
&
so Atargatis is a fertility goddess of Northern Syria who accidentally kills her husband while making
love to him (pussy too bomb). she’s so sad about it she drowns herself in a lake but she’s so lovely in her
drowning she’s transformed into the world’s very first mermaid! while this goes down, the weather
keeps changing & golden hour gets later & later. a toddler complains about her food, a boy asks for a
motorcycle, a daughter trims their bangs
&
in my dreams I’m never beautiful. I climb out of the ocean & my eyes are gorgeous but my gills haven’t
grown out yet. I walk to the Vons which still hasn’t been eaten by the recession. I buy the 7up cake only
Esperanza seemed able to find. I was named after water, but I was raised through drought. baba calls
my stalker the man who shadowed you. I think I am made of shadows. I California the leather & my
abdomen splits, motor oil, almonds, alphabet
&
I’m told I emerged from the ocean, all hair &
swatched rigging of ribs. I was a girl once.
I watched my back, parted my hair down the middle.
I’m a myth now. I’m printed on coins. professors
allude to me in crowded hallways.
&
The legend goes
that the goddess Dione accompanied by Eros
plunged into the Euphrates, whereby a pair of fish
came to guide them through water
to aid her escape from her husband,
god Typhon. The fish
are commemorated
as the constellation
Pisces, & local Syrians
apparently abstain
from eating fish
on account of it.
The name Dione
was also an epithet
of Aphrodite/Venus
herself. So the legend
has also been told as one of Venus
casting herself into the Euphrates, then transforming
&
you’re prowling another girl’s Twitter worried about her laugh when you should be making yours. you
watch her beam into the screen, knowing & absolute. you want to claw her open, wear her face to the
bottom of the ocean. but pussy too bomb still
&
The second myth
describes the birth of Syrian Venus,
our Atargatis, as originating in an egg
which fell into the Euphrates,
was rolled onto land by fish, & hatched
in the clutches of doves.
&
in the clutches of doves,
regardless of thefrenchthecrusaderstheottomans,
there are pomelos, the smell of gas, standing in San Juan
behind a mother & her daughter
gossiping in matching skirts. a daughter
is a compromise, just like a country,
meaning I worry about my beauty,
I pay my taxes, eat turkey bacon. I
come from April, humidity & the irrevocable
singing of birds. all my spirit needs
is to lay down & listen to Drake. once,
her sisters had salt for mouths.
&
I couldn’t love a man, because I loved the sea. (Etel Adnan)
&
me & my spotting Euphrates,
waiting in line for Chik-Fil A.
(the nuggets are soo expensive but lowkey worth.)
&
so beautiful in her drowning my spirit speaks six languages all of them taped to the
wall next to mama in a brown dress my spirit wants to build a television
& melt it for broth I write here in the crevice across pandemics where an
unprecedented amount of us recognize our country as the massive peach it is
rupturing at the skin with rot I am so full of salt so watered & well-fed so American
&
beautiful in her drowning, mama cleanses her mouth of its iron. in the morning
I make sure to take my folate pills so my skin appears ruddy & bright
&
An Atargatis relief set in a circular panel,
the bottom part of which is broken off [the
Zodiac Tyche upper block]. There is a crown
over her wavy hair, which falls down the sides
of her head in two long tresses. Over her right
shoulder is a moon. (Chapter 8, THE NABATAEAN
TEMPLE AT KHIRBET ET-TANNUR, JORDAN:
VOLUME 2 — CULTIC OFFERINGS, VESSELS,
AND OTHER SPECIALIST REPORTS)
&
Coin Depicting Fish-bodied Atargatis
Holding Her Egg & Flanked by Barley Stalks
&
(Atargatis: speed your uncle’s Beemer. you could be dead by August.)
&
on Gati’s days off we steal brown lip liners
from Target, binge watermelon sour patches
& Scandal. we explain our spleens
to the class, like I walk into an antique store
& there is my people’s blood
in a display case next to earrings. we
walk with our backs straight. we’ve just dyed our
roots red. we know what is most delicious to animals.
as for beauty, that bitch
with her hands in our larynx–
Author’s note: The first quote in the poem is from Layla Qais’s essay A Wanting to be Beautiful Woman.
