Two Poems by Fatimah Asghar

This World Poetry Day, we are sharing poems by Fatimah Asghar that speak to multiple communities, geographies, and crises in our world — where solidarities flower in beauty salons, ICE trucks cluster, grandmothers pray, empires collapse, and fists pulse. The poems thread rhythmically through equally horrifying and tender, grandiose and soft everyday images, nurturing resonances between our varied personal, communal, and political experiences.

With an illustration by Simone Khanyi Hadebe.

Supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

[somewhere, somewhere, someone] 

somewhere, a legion of grandmothers 
prayed & the empire collapsed. somewhere 
an aunt dug a circle & buried a secret.  

somewhere, a saint’s body birthed 
a tree. somewhere, the jinn sat in
the banyans & watched. somewhere,  

the planets danced & everyone’s birth 
chart tightened. embers in the chest.
somewhere, the fish carried 

the prayers to god. somewhere, an  
ancestor spoke in a dream. somewhere, 
the ICE truck is towed before the raid.  

under the rubble a grandfather reached 
his hand to the sky. under the rubble, 
400,000 hearts, slowing. somewhere, 

a prime minister said violation of international 
law & no government did anything.  
the government kidnapped its own people. 

somewhere, someone cried for help &
something else answered. somewhere, 
an elder’s wrinkled hands sewed a blanket 

for a child. somewhere, someone touched
a tasbeeh. somewhere, someone lit a candle 
at their altar. the plantation burned  

& water refused to give its gift. 
something else answered. someone pulled 
the tower. somewhere, someone survived 

under the rubble, someone’s hand opened
someone’s fist pulsed, someone stayed alive.   

[ya latif, ya latif, ya latif]  

chanted so fast my jaw numbs. 

in the back of the masjid, the speaker
goes & i can only hear the hum, the words 

lightning so fast they become another
word entirely. the stone in me waters.  

i river. frantic & hairy i go to my waxer before 
my flight. the girls nah work today, the woman 

says, resigned to her chair, beady eyes 
to the window. she points me to a shop 

i’ve never been, too pink & bright. ICE 
trucks stop at every corner. orange 

man’s fear, spittle at the podium
& everyone scatters in the daylight.  

one week into his re-rule & the photos
come: guantanamo, men picked from 

neighbourhoods like fruit, shirtless 
& tattooed, pressed besides each other. 

neck crooned against neck, gentle. hiding 
their faces from the camera’s look. 

ya latif, ya latif, ya latif. what kindness:  
hands bound & unclothed & still,  

shielding each other with their bodies. 
tender. too tender. what is ours to look? 

what is not? i couldn’t hold the gentle. intrusion.  
i carry them in my river. i chant ya latif,  

ya latif, ya latif for each one in the photo,  
for each one not in the photo. 

at the pink shop down the street, still 
no girls — just the owner papered  

& safe. a gen z-er argues with her too
long about a misplaced eyebrow hair. they stand 

side by side, looking in the mirror
for ten minutes. every time I come here, you  

do this. the gen z-er huffs, then leaves. the block 
hot, the trucks move & she might text

a friend i’m never coming here again. i let 
the couple with the newborn go before 

me. how old? the owner croons. three weeks.  
i watch the owner, thread between her teeth  

her neck gentle, un-necked by others, bobbing, 
back & forth, its own dhiker in the waxing shop,  

its tender metronome; 
ya latif/ ya latif/ ya latif/ ya latif  

Fatimah Asghar's Daughter of the Mountains (Penguin / Randomhouse) is forthcoming July 2026 and explores homecoming, spirituality, and ancestral homeland.