Sherdil Awais Rashid
Sherdil is a 20-year-old poet from Lahore. His work explores what it means to live in pleasure, marginality, and communitas. In addition to poetry, Sherdil enjoys embroidery, drag, and trees, which often inspire his creative work. He has been featured in Kitab Ghar’s essay collection Dhalta Suraj, and has published poems in Olomopolo Media’s anthology, Uncollected, as well as poet Chen-Chen’s e-mag, Lickety Split. He was the recipient of a Kitab Ghar grant for Pakistani poet Sadia Khatri’s workshop Reading and Writing with the World, and was selected for the Queer Writer’s Room residency hosted by the Queer Muslim Project in Colombo. Sherdil is currently a History undergraduate, and he hopes to keep emphasizing that poetry is, like bread, a human necessity.
JUST ‘CAUSE YOU AMERICAN/ DOESN’T MEAN YOU AMERISHOULD
A thick-set man stands over an empty bed
His pants jostle against his ankles as he vigorously
leaves himself, in strokes, over the pillow, the tousled sheets.
As he hears the pound of hooves approaching, he dresses
and, smiling, he leaves, scratching the little red lesions on his neck…
You, what did we study yesterday?
One kalashnikov plus one kalashnikov
equals two kalashnikovs, sir.
Good. Again.
One kalashnikov plus one kalashnikov…
There are no large predators in Hanoi,
no leopards or lions or tigers. Sometimes, however,
by the light of the fireworks, or on days of old, brittle mist
the people living there find huge paw prints,
muddied, and strangely spangled, with rust…
This is it, a clear shot to the head, his hands
steady on the controls, oh you are going down you bas–
O Joe-o! I’m putting the snacks outside your door, get ‘em
before they go bad! And just like that his focus is shattered,
his target lost. It’s okay though, no worries. He’ll hunt ‘em down again…
Beaming, a woman draws a Disney-blue heart
over her signature. The ink sparkles
like the blood of an insect. The metal underneath
points skyward, as if preparing itself for
its journey…
See, ever since the Iberians first cut across the Atlantic and put their foot down
on the necks of those already living there, ever since those men masturbated measles onto
Native beds, a ravenous dark
has taken hold of America’s consciousness. It is a dark that
keeps equipping children along the Durand Line with guns keeps
the broken horrors of its Tiger Force in ‘Nam buried like a splinter keeps
teaching teens to operate drones with joysticks, descending on a newly unlocked Pakistani village keeps signing
encouragements on missiles bound for Gaza, Rafah, Khan Younis, keeps blazing through global feeling keeps
America a culture that
keeps disappearing cultures.
The views and opinions expressed in the poems submitted to and/or selected as winners in our contests are those of the authors. We are non-political and focused on celebrating artistic expression, amplifying different voices and views, and fostering dialogue on important themes through poetry.