Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure. Since there are no definitive records of the time of her birth, there is no real way of knowing, but it would explain a few things. Bushra is a vagabond poet who traveled [...]
A poem by Bushra Rehman that appears in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality from Sibling Rivalry Press (October 2011) and edited by Kevin Simmonds.
Every few weeks, and really it could have been less, an abandoned car showed up outside our dining room window. The car would be left there sometime on a Saturday night, whole for just a moment before it would start to decay. Every morning after that, pieces would go missing, the tires would be the [...]
The minar and dome of our masjid took longer to grow than trees. Our fathers bought the land, then tilled it. Before that, it was a parking lot for the Jehovah’s Witness. They sold it when the door to door wasn’t bringing in the donations. Our fathers sowed the seeds then Qurans and janamazes. In [...]
First published with Delirious Hem, May 15, 2010 Daisy and I used to joke, you’re Cherríe and I’m Gloria , when we were editing our book Colonize This! (i) There was something about the softness and hardness we wanted to evoke in the process. And yes, perhaps we did idolize, and yes, who’s the soft [...]