After I Take My Shahada

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By Antonio López

November 20, 2015

Rashid pops his Chevy ’08, & offers me
a cloth. Its silk thirsts in the imported oil
of fingers. I unfurl the Moroccan cloth,
& I’m a flower boy again. My salted petals
ensnare the mariachi, guide trumpets
to cry inside my chest. The brass
sings my torso into a trompo
that slips from Papá’s strings,
& skids onto plaza. My legless body
steels a tip, y zapatea los nervios
away. The brothers shout Allahu
Akbar, & I am anointed to dervish.
& I too hear the whirs when forehead
meets sajjada, & chants God’s name.

Photo by Attiya Latif

Antonio López has received scholarships from the Community of Writers in Squaw Valley, Tin House Summer Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, and Bread Loaf. A CantoMundo Fellow, his work has appeared or is forthcoming PEN/America, Insider Higher Education, Palette Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House and elsewhere. His debut collection, Gentefication, won the 2019 Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry, judged by Gregory Pardlo. He is a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University.