Work by Aisha Sharif

  1. Moonwalker

    Posted in Poetry, October 2009

    Sometimes I dream of walk­ing out of my body. I’ve never found a way to love the fig­ure of brown that stares me down in the mir­ror. I moon­walked for the first time on Motown 25. People think it takes con­cen­tra­tion. They don’t know that when I moon­walk I’m dream­ing, push­ing myself back, through some [...]

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  2. Michael Knows

    Posted in Poetry, October 2009

    that an 8-count doesn’t count; music is a feel­ing. He knows when Jackie Wilson slid across the Apollo in ’69, dance became a song of the body. Michael’s been try­ing to sing out his body ever since. Michael knows child­hood is ten­der as a sore. But he doesn’t know why color mat­ters in the public’s eye. [...]

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  3. Puberty

    Posted in Poetry, October 2009

    In Michael’s mir­ror, his nose is a rot­ten potato. Dry skin cracks like an earth­quake. Pimples sprout like eyes. In his mir­ror, girls watch and whis­per, Ew, what a big ol’ nose. Michael pushes in nos­trils, picks at pim­ples, scrubs black­heads. Can’t under­stand— they won’t dis­ap­pear. Mother fails to con­sole, Maybe you’re con­sti­pated. She cleans puss, [...]

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