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Irteqa Khan

autophagy as an-nahl 
after “bee and woman: an anatomy” by anne simpson  


when we will something to happen, all that we say is, ‘be,’ and it is - al quran, 16:40 لحنلا .i 


a teaspoon’s worth 
of an errant, compound gaze 
at some spiritual waypoint 
i have come 


as a colony, a comb, a cure 
لحنلا .ii 
cartographies of nectar 
with a lifetime of dance 
beautiful and giving as 
the balming music i foraged are 
my dirty wings transposing 
into a waxy nest while 
i dream of flight 
as the nexus of survival 
لحنلا .iii 
the hive is an empathy 
a paracosm of sticky stingers 
where my body unbottles 
as pollen, indulgent cells 
carrying me seismically 
with the disintegrating power 
of indelicate growth  
consuming and creating 
as an entirety gathering life 
لحنلا , لحنلا , لحنلا .iv 
over and over and over


Irteqa Khan (she/her) is a Muslim-Canadian writer and poet from Peshawar, Pakistan. She holds an Honours degree in History and an MA in Political Studies from the University of Saskatchewan and is a first-year Ph.D. in Political Science student at York University. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in L’Éphémère Review, Spring Magazine, Homology Lit, ANMLY, Honey Literary, and Aôthen Magazine among others, and is forthcoming in śvās magazine and The Hyacinth Review. Irteqa’s debut poetry chapbook, rēza rēza, was published with Gap Riot Press in 2020.
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