Brigade

By Alia Hussain Vancrown

 

fireflies talk to each other

with light

 

in some firefly species

only one sex lights up

(but let’s not make that

everything)

in most species

both sexes glow

 

fireflies produce cold light

two chemicals

are in a firefly’s tail:

luciferase and luciferin

and here the story begins

the root of the lightbringer

Lucifer, commanding men

all over the world

to blackout living things

especially women

 

a firefly finds its way

inside Dar-ul-Islah

lands on the green curtain

drawn horizontally across

the entire mosque

to separate the pious men

from the pious women

(but let’s not forget

if we were pious

there’d be no need

for forced separation)

 

from this distance

you can’t tell

the sex of the firefly

I imagine the human brain

emits its own cold light

eating itself

light eating light

in the darkness

 

when you look at a living thing

you don’t consider binaries

you imitate its light and flash

the dark little by little

the two of you lighthouses

signaling the lost safely ashore

the two of you

tunnel and train

the two of you

astonishment

 

these are not acceptable

philosophies of the sermon

or the sermonizer

surahs in baritone

imagine Arabic in soprano

it would be a song

it would be Jannat under our mothers’ feet

 

I could have sworn

the firefly on the green curtain

wouldn’t choose a side

yet there it flits and lifts

well beyond the dome

of the mosque

 

I could have sworn

the acorns scattered along

the cracks in the stone path

didn’t ask to be crushed

by devout children, their light

made up for them

the dusky husks

of cicadas on leaves

a tinny orchestra of autumn

 

yet here we are

the world’s music a cacophony

of destruction and softness

in equal parts

but destruction ever louder

 

would a male god allow

something goddamn else

a male god who gave some of his animals

the ability to create their own light

as a means of survival

 

I’m telling you if I sit in the back

behind men any longer

sectioned off as sin

the darkness will extinguish me

 

and I’m not saying

I should have been born a boy

or that I identify as anything other

than a woman warrior

(though why is it so wrong

to be a scattering)

but I’m telling you if I sit

behind these men making

all of the decisions

for every one of us

 

fireflies are going to charge

out of my mouth

light will cannibalize light

they don’t live long

let this be a warning

 

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Alia Hussain Vancrown has published in journals and magazines in print and online. Her poetry has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was selected to participate in Winter Tangerine’s 2018 workshop, Singing Songs Crooning Comets, featuring seminars by Kaveh Akbar and Aricka Foreman. Alia works at the Library of Congress in the Law Division. She currently resides in Maryland. For more, please visit www.aliahussainvancrown.com and Instagram @aliagoestothelibrary.

Photo credit: slgckgc via a Creative Commons license.