Parts Unknown

Not unbecause of food
I called you teacake
you whispered noodle

Sunday mornings I rode down ninth avenue
through the tar and sausage shops
and watched the donut bakers haul flour
bad riding surface, riding route
all sand and cabs and gleaming blacktop nuggets
the Lincoln tunnel
fools’ coal

We leaved the basil
and bought the milk
picked inoffensive brunch music
and started buttering bread
moved receipts around
and clocked the bottles
the richer waiters
downed on dinner shift

You stole my mother’s chutney method
used it in your marriage
with chips

I tried to tell you what Zora knew
That grinding dhania pyaz and lime
hari mirch and zeera
is for red rice roti
has its Sindhi song
wants but doesn’t need
the blue tiles of Thatta
to rein it in and burn it out
the bhuts of Makri necropolis
to tell suitable stories
sing feasts of old deads
Jan Nizamuddin
and Isa Khan Tarkhan the Younger
his father Jan Baba
frightens the bonesick kitten
whose nose gets in it
when she drags a coin-sized whole
fried flat fish
away from the tavva
into her shitty chamber
between the four wobbly legs of a plastic chair
in the dust
bathes like a bird

I paid for trips to Pakistan
for red rice roti with tips
from truffled New York egg toasts

In restaurants
starting with that one
my friend became such a drunk
she died

This is women’s work
we told each other
feeding other people’s children
so you can pay to go home

She knew ground red rice
was all that honor was
hands that know from kneading
should issue all decrees
blisters from the village woodfire
would crown and scepter be
if the world was unfucked like this

* * *

Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Williams College, where she teaches colonial and postcolonial literature and theory. She is writing an academic book about terrorism and the epidemic imaginary in colonial letters and a collection of poems called Janaab-e Shikva after the Urdu poet Iqbal.