A Victory over the Self Is No Victory at All

By Momtaza Mehri
Woke up from a long nap and I deserved it.
Stared at the ceiling. Half-dreaming
my dead grandfather’s dimpled face hovering above.
His turban a splotch of white, his craggy face looking only mildly disappointed.
I am mildly disappointed in myself,
in my addiction to white sugar and self-neglect.
My meadow of grievances.
My dutifully watered shrubbery of angst.
So tall they graze the bare thighs.
Give me a field for an excuse.
Let me throw these loose stones in various directions.
Hit what I can. Improve my aim.
Give shape to lack.
Call this thing a poem. Watch it drag its lazy leg,
scratching its dirty face in the corner of the room.
I greet it in earnest.
Receptacle for everything I casually name but barely understand.
Shelter for my worst impulses.
The animal I lock up at night.
In your confines, the woman doesn’t justify her mistakes.
She sits at the edge of the poem, at the mouth of remorse,
holding onto the lip of the kitchen sink. Wave after wave,
doubt crashes into her.
For once, the moon listens to her side of the story.
She shimmers like a cliché. Light floods the text, the body of words
the body is poured into.
The futile geometries of the heart.
You are not this woman except when you are.
You are not the poems you write,
the days submerged under the weight of all that is unsaid.
The mornings as slow as marriage.
Tongue scrapers and the placid coolness of a Gua Sha against the cheek.
The haphazard transcendence you stumble upon.
The utterness of your singularity and the singularity of your utterness.
All yours to honor or betray.

Notes:

This poem is part of the folio “Freed Verse: A Reckoning of Black British Poets.” Read the rest of the folio in the September 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (September 2025)