Safiyya Haider

Cowgirl Dérive

— after the Situationist International

I’ll never lose myself in these streets familiar to the smelly bone so / I close my eyes and drink
corrosive honey colossal carbon imprints so I may see foreign ancient blood behind my eyelids
but / these streets are my arteries carnal canals of flash flood flesh. Comatose / I’m a connoisseur
of urban ecology, walking on BMX paths on 9th Street.

I’ll conjure a dream map of oaks so downtrodden by storm and fury of demolition so / I may
vanish to my grandparent’s weeping willow shrouded London backyard. We weep / knowing the
palm trees cactus and plywood fortified are destined for demolition.  Like a sick dog for
euthanasia. 

What will this place be if not the wildlife sanctuary of my youth? I’m searching I’m starving
for                   fresh air vestiges of old Austin exemplified by my kid brother’s
tie-dye t-shirt. Who will I be once they’re all gone—turned to steel—fracked— to the aquifer’s
rocky bloody surface. Catch me. Crawling in the catchment area carbonate pore filtered.

Now you can still see the open expanses of sky in multimillion dollar deals
of land where God’s monocle peers in awe to 6th street as intimate as CCTV/You need /to look /
for the moments of quiet. That’s how to write a holy book not a shackle of
bound
fragments.  

I found the strength of my lithe body in this temporal lithosphere. 

I understand the animal behavior of automobiles. 

I am The Last Pedestrian 
running on Sidewalks & Skeletons petroleum.

I spell mera naam spellbound 
on linoleum sheen
over Twin Liquors 
The workers 
must be ghosts.

I’ll turn to liquid if I don’t make it home by Maghrib.   

Assimilation is Performance Art

America is predicated upon walking on dead bodies as if they were a crystal floor stunning
Prophet Suleiman, lover of jinn and humans. I set off the fire alarm in my apartment today
Bullish as we may be,           we can’t plow through this dense dimension by brute force sweet
potato smoke sweeter than any candle                   We need to find the poetry.    A    mantra    of
the praying mantis to tame the shrew. In our aberrance,                  we’ve    forgotten    how    to
domesticate animals.          Soon, the jaguar will be teaching Padawan prayer.

Lately our survival has started to feel like the end of a too-long movie.                   The popcorn’s
making me nauseous. Limbs long gone numb. The  black lights.          shut out our circadian
rhythm.     Delirium in 4k.       I can’t stop watching in sadism.  Hand me an Icee so my brain may
freeze. 

Every cell in my body is undergoing glycolysis, the national anthem. My swollen ankles and
desiccated hair make me an American, the parasitic pain of invasive species transmuting my
body into a machine, the art only bourgeois of the techno West may produce. The flames a
wildfire in my mind then flickering embers receding into callouses remind me I’m alien, the land
spurning me like floods uncovering Muslim graves, corpses unbound, no coffin.
apoptosis 

My spindly legs are about to collapse. They’re replaceable. Your body is expendable. Anyone
can be the hot new young thing.                    look at my anatomy
                                                                                                                            but don’t touch 

Safiyya Haider is a junior genetics major at UT Austin. Her poetry is featured in SPARK Magazine, Saffron ATX, and Silk Club. Her work was recently awarded the Fania Kruger Fellowship for social justice. Her favorite pastime is sitting outside and doing nothing, but she calls it “transcendental meditation.”