BIO
A native New Yorker, & former social worker, Shafina Ahmed is a Muslim-Bengali American writer/poet. She has performed in several poetry stage & TV productions with the Full Circle Ensemble; Astoria Stand Up – Harmony & Dissonance Sessions; & “Around the Fire” QPTV with Frank Robinson. She has featured at various poetry venues in NYC such as Nuyorican Café, Union Square Slam, Great Weather Media, Wordat4F. She currently co-curates Poets Settlement monthly Reading/Poetry Series in Brooklyn, and the storytelling series How To Build A Fire. In 2014 she was published in Full Circle Anthology and in 2018 'Miscellany' by RunAmok Books and is currently working on a chapbook of poetry and prose.
We learned to dance with each other for the first time
among red pepper plants, purple-white budding string beans, yellow
squash blossoms swaying in the warm honeyed winds
plump sun spilling lush green leaves
over the yard gate onto your idea of blue yarn and wire hangers
hung on chain link fence as makeshift perches
pathways for winding vines, veins of your garden, Ma
we built from dirt, seeds, water, tears, prayers and so much hope
whispered into cheap plastic pots we bought at the 99 cents store
before the word “cancer” lay in your left breast
sickening my motherland
neither of us good dance partners for each other because
we both want to lead
and we never knew how to speak
And now all we want is song
All we want is our voice dance! our soul salt! till the soil!
And song the earth in our feet, in our mouths
in our tongues We dance to its winds
Carry us, Hold us
Me daughter of Ma, Ma mother of temples
We orbit each other make new gravity, rhythm,
god particles into lullaby “La illah ha illal la illal lal la , joll le shan nu who
Allah who Allah who Allah” - There is one god and that is god
An ancient chant boned into us, Ganga Ma the River Mother
our language, our blood lotus flower reminding When I breathe Ma
breathes
We will not become stone here Ma
We will give each other so much after we’ve given each other so much
Sunrise the sky into a blue sari on clotheslines catching the light and song
rushing from us, singing us from our village, our tribe,
our ancestors sang! when the farms fields of rice were dry with drought and death
brown thin arms stretched to the heavens
praying “Allah megh deh pani deh saiya de re tu ! Allah megh deh! God
give us rain give us water give us your sheltering shade!”
We will do the same Ma
We will love here Ma
We will home here Ma
Ma will Ma here Ma
Everything here is born alive Ma
This is our new summer, New sun, New sky
The new shine of stars Painting us alive
into ancestral rain songs and birdcalls
living in the flowers of a Brooklyn garden.