TEETH by Taymurah Jefri

whet your teeth with a chin like that,
they pronounce your name as a backward blessing.
too much skin,
and you’re a menagerie fetishized by
the same maws preaching how unholy of you.

i am a left foot entering the mosque
if i don’t worship their sons.
i am a batik messy with the dye
of their charientism because i wear myself
inside out.

what i want is to seduce
this culture into rehabilitation.
what i mean is to vandalize
the harem of today’s malaikah.

be a pilgrim to my bosom.
here, an orchard of wounds
overripe: waiting still to be
harvested, digested.

here, the untaming of tongues
to a tigress’ glossolalia.

Taymurah Jefri is a home-educated aspiring writer and queer PoC from a land dancing between Sumatra and Thailand. They spend their languorous days reciting pharmacopoeias and the backs of juice cartons, performing nightly rituals of dabbling in mythology, thanatology and anything macabre — all of which births a tongue wet with taboos and wild honey. Read about their affairs with Edgar Allan Poe and Vladimir Nabokov at glycophemy.tumblr.com.