GHAZAL FOR HELEN

Before the War, there is palm and fat and oil

In the droning black cave of mouth: minted oil


The Hedonists have shamrocked the Federal Reserve apart, 

This tar-black reservation water is my country’s bare-glinted oil 


No departure radical enough for the half-raped statue 

Of a Goddess saffronized, her breasts in fingerprinted oil 


Oh dear, it seems this ghazal has won no kind remarks 

For its own sake, it must be revised until the body is disjointed oil 


The metaphor of oil is tiresome unless one has spent a life 

Taxed and retaxed in the currency of oceans’ mezzotinted oil 


It seems no language may name the heat signature a body 

makes before its last words are shed in an urn of tainted oil 


Oh, Helen, with a coin over each eye — will you not pray 

for this nation, your nation: in the religion of surprinted oil?


Amrita Nur is a writer from Philadelphia.

Amrita Nur

Amrita Nur is a writer from Philadelphia.

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