KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Shadab Zeest-Hashmi
Tongue
The tongue in the Dictionary
does all the defining
(It will never
be tried
at the Hague)
is a translucence
milked from a mature snake
is the velvet click
of a drone attack
is that lusty flicker
you and I saw at a mass grave
Shadab Zeest Hashmi's Baker of Tarifa, a book based on the history of
interfaith tolerance in Al Andalus, won the 2011 San Diego Book Award for
poetry. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple
times, and have been translated into Spanish and Urdu. She is the winner
of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize and her work has appeared in Poetry
International, The Cortland Review, Vallum, Nimrod, Atlanta Review, The Bitter
Oleander, Drunken Boat, RHINO, Journal of Postcolonial Writings, Spillway,
The Adirondack Review, and is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and Wasafiri,
among other journals. She represents Pakistan on the website UniVerse: A
United Nations of Poetry, and has taught in the MFA program at San Diego State
University as a writer-in-residence. She is a guest columnist for 3 Quarks Daily.
Kohl and Chalk is her new book of poems.