Vortex

Back where I’m from,
the afternoon is like a dimension;
you crawl in through one end
and crawl out the other,
with half the day gone

*

Coffee Mornings

They keep sipping coffee,
they keep feeling empty.

*

Gladiator

Mother,
when I behave myself,
I feel
like a gladiator
trapped
in a tiffin.

*

Murder of an Autumnal Paris Evening

There was a girl in Khadee
under the Eiffel Tower;
her dress kept stabbing
the evening’s grey heart
like a rainbow-coloured sword

*

You Give Up On Your Homeland When

Being loyal to it
feels like
betraying yourself

*

Some Men

Some men,
when they see me on the road,
grind their teeth so hard, make
their engines growl so loud;
I know
they’ve ground me to gravel
in their minds

Naima Rashid is a writer, poet, and translator. Her first book was "Defiance of the Rose" (Oxford University Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Asymptote, The Scores, Lucy Writers Platform, Visual Verse and other places and was long-listed for the National Poetry Competition (UK) 2019. Forthcoming works include a translation of the Urdu novel "Naulakhi Kothi" by Ali Akbar Natiq (Penguin Random House, India 2022).