Litany of the Shoreline by Naush Sabah
over head billowing
headscarf white as surf
like a hug
billowing like a curtain
or a flag hanging like
a noose a mask like
a blanket a sheet
billowing
draped
falling wrapped
falling
pinned
falling
looped
falling
hanging
like
doubt
dig run pile shape
press and bury kick and claw
pack tightly into
buckets and flood with seawater
collapse with toes and run shout laugh
and fall fling still still in the water
be buried be moved
wet heavy
touch of air
kiss of breeze
on bronzed skin
clumps of sand
cling sculpted
and motionless
but for a sweep
of hair
naked
and glistening
in the sun
in the baked sand
by the shoreline
in the salt air
of the shoreline
in the sway tug
of the shoreline
still shining
gold bare
bare
there’s an art to looking
away to seeing
and unseeing to know
ing and avoiding
to taking in wholly but refusing
to see there’s an ease
in her squareness
confidence in her ordinariness ease in her
bareness
and skin
in her
movement
love in her
running running by the shoreline running by the sea embracing a friend naked
bare breasts
chest
air
watch me watch me watching you look at me looking
look at me here too the other side of that sea
look
at me
at me concealed by the shoreline by the sea
lap me up at the sea
look at me burying my feet in the sand
look at me stand
in the sea
look at my legs glistening
bare in the sea
wisps of my hair
in the sea air
my scarf
dancing
in wind
by the
sea
subject to me this shoreline and this sea
the eye of the land is looking at me
and no veil covers me
nothing veils me
though I elude them
disfigure the faces
dis
figure
subject to me
each shoreline
each
sea
'Litany of the Shoreline' was first published in Litanies (Guillemot Press, 2021). Wasafiri 108, on the libraries and literatures of Islam, is available to order now. Naush Sabah is a writer from the West Midlands. She is Editor and Publishing Director at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and a trustee at Poetry London. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Review, the TLS, PN Review, The Dark Horse, and elsewhere. Her debut pamphlet Litanies was published by Guillemot Press in November 2021. Photo by Josh Withers on Unsplash
