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My Poem of the Week: 'yasmeen' by Safia Elhillo
yasmeen
i was born at the rupture the root where i split from my parallel self  i split from the girl i also could have been & her name / easy / i know the story all her life / my mother wanted a girl named for a flower whose oil scents all our mothers / petals wrung for their perfume | i was planted land became ocean became land anew its shape refusing root in my fallow mouth cleaving my life neatly & my name / taken from a dead woman to remember / to fill an aperture with cut jasmine in a bowl our longing our mothers’ wilting garlands hanging from our necks |
The formatting is far from perfect (it shouldn't really be in a table...) but this is the best I could do on DW. Here is the poet performing the piece.