Sand Covered City

by Munawwar Abdulla

Elect a baby as king, why don’t you? I am
played in, loved in, traded in, not
fenced in. Nor do walls protect me.
Perhaps the desert does.

Isn’t music a lovely thing? Your feet
dancing and massaging my back
for now. I love the stories
told on market days, you
locals, you travellers.
Come home and come in peace.

When the jealous sun king
comes for gold and my happiness, the desert
and the babies can do so much. I need you
to stay alive. Or I am only ghost.
Protect yourselves for me, you merry people.

When his soldiers come my belly fills
with baby heads. Please, do not make me
drink your blood. When they spill
into pillage, keep your souls, keep
your souls, I won’t accept them. Become
the desert and keep watch.
Keep watch until I am reborn.

Desert, protect me, will you? Let your fine
grains cover me like a blanket. I am tired
of the sun and the metal and the iron.
Let me sleep until the merry people return

They will rebuild me with their lost spirits
Next to the newborn graveyard
My belly, filled with royal heads.

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Munawwar Abdulla is an Uyghur advocate, poet, and scientist born on Kaurna land and based in Massachusetts. She co-founded The Tarim Network, runs Uyghur Collective, and collaborates on projects with Uyghur rights organizations around the world. Her writings and literary translations have been published in places such as Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, The Margins, and others, and she recently co-edited the anthology Under the Mulberry Tree.