Fatimah Asghar

cantfindit

Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. A poet, a fiction writer, and a filmmaker, Fatimah cares less about genre and instead prioritizes the story that needs to be told and finds the best vehicle to tell it. Play is critical in the development of their work, as is intentionally building relationship and authentic collaboration. Their first book of poems If They Come For Us explored themes of orphaning, family, Partition, borders, shifting identity, and violence. Along with Safia Elhillo, they co-edited Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology for Muslim people who are also women, trans, gender non-conforming, and/ or queer. The anthology was built around the radical idea that there are as many ways of being Muslim as there are Muslim people in the world. They also wrote and co-created Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendship among women of color. Their debut lyrical novel, When We Were Sisters, explores sisterhood, orphaning, and alternate family building, and is forthcoming October 2022. While these projects approach storytelling through various mediums and tones, at the heart of all of them is Fatimah’s unique voice, insistence on creating alternate possibilities of identity, relationships and humanity then the ones that society would box us into, and a deep play and joy embedded in the craft. Source

Look, I’m Not Good at Eating Chicken

& yes, my family did raise me right. Yes,

they cleaned their bones & cracked them clean

open to suck. Would fight over cartilage & knuckle.

Sip the marrow’s nectar from urn. Yes, I watched.

Yes, I’ll teach my children to do the same. To savor

the sound of their teeth against bone pulling & pulling

always in search of more. I know I’m gonna be poor

for the rest of my life. But right now I’m alone.

In a strange city with money in my pocket

& no friends. No home to go back to, no children

waiting to be fed or taught. Meat on the bones

skin in the trash. Joints a trap of bird & muscle

waiting to be chewed. Let me be young & disrespectful.

Let me leave my plate an unfinished slaughter.

Let me spend & eat until I, & no one else, says I’m done.

Published:

2016

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Agency

Family

Food

Literary Devices:

Alliteration

the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Bleeding Title

when the title of a poem acts as the first line

Hyperbole

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally