Namaz(te)
Every outing requires ablutions now. With
water, with bleach, with miles of surgical masks stacked
like crooked minarets.
I take up the habit of cleansing myself and asking
for the most delusional things.
Like a cure.
Bend and rise like the short hand of a clock. I get up
and the world has not changed.
The smoke of my incense, pierced into a plastic cup of raw rice,
crawls up the air vent to your apartment above mine.
I whisper that there is no god but God, your holy statues
smile.
On the news they declare that the death tolls are slowing down.
They finally have spare beds for us to die in.
They report that the vaccines are doing what they are supposed to do.
We meet in the elevator and smile with our eyes, mouths behind
stiff white domes of polypropylene.
We sigh together in relief and cheer that the end is near, and not
in the way we thought.
“Things might finally get back to normal soon,”
we croon.
The believer in me recognizes the believer in you.
Elizabeth Shanaz
Elizabeth Shanaz is a New York based writer. Her work has been featured in Playboy, Human/Kind, Sorjo, Defunkt, PREE Lit, and the Blue Minaret, among other journals and magazines. She studied writing and literature at CUNY City College before earning her law degree from NYU School of Law. She is the proud child of Guyanese immigrants.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
This one just really hit me right in my heart strings and isn’t that what poetry is about? The right poem entering your heart at the right time and moving you toward deeper connection with the world and yourself?
There are some killer lines like "I take up the habit of cleansing myself and asking/for the most delusional things./Like a cure." and “I get up/and the world has not changed.”
And I also think that trying to bridge gaps between faiths is a beautiful and crucial ethos. I know we can look at the world and see so much hate and dogma, but at the end of the day belief in things that push us toward deeper connection is beautiful. Belief in things that make us better people. Belief that a better, more empathetic world is possible.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
My ears perked at the preference for spiritual poetry in the submission guidelines :)
You said in your cover letter that you are interested in bridging gaps between faiths, talk to me about that a little bit and what that means for your poetics in 2025?
Spiritual subject matter is tough to place because every reader has their own cemented spiritual outlook, and that can be tough to crack as an artist seeking to connect with a broad audience. My poetry aims to bridge these cement blocks by acknowledging other traditions with dignity without in any way compromising my own. It's a challenging line to walk, but the walk is necessary if spiritual discourse is going to endure viably in creative spaces.
There is a lot of different tensions in this poem, COVID, faith practices, and of course, genocide. How did you go about managing these tensions in this poem?
There are certainly a number of tensions in this poem, which at first can be very overwhelming. I approached this poem, however, with the same outlook that I approach prayer. I approach the prayer rug with a million thoughts and tensions and concerns tangled in my mind. And when I set them out in conversation with God, things begin to categorize themselves into buckets, wires get untangled, all the mess disperses into an organized waltz. It is this exact serenity of divine discussion that I hoped to convey in this poem, no matter what spiritual tradition that it may derive from.