soundtrack: feat. phatkat, j dilla
make it spare stark & simple. make this mark, not too clean make it crack static & pop the sound
equivalent of rough. feel every bump. texture this landscape you map it i ride surface glide
each moment. it’s all action. you built this up. make it move something like bloodstream circulate
wind i know your driving destination beyond my horizon. the wheels revolve each turn a
return a ground in dirt. the wheels revolve kick up dust in your wake off where i can’t see & i trust
you lead i follow. you open up planes through dreams where borders reveal themselves in the
spaces between them. belong to no one & everyone, living & dead. beyond articulation i
still speak to you. the sheer organza of it shimmering iridescent duo-tone purple-pink of it. &
home becomes anything or anywhere that will meet me. find me here face me. home a stutter.
home a crunch. home say it with your movement. home a flow. home every layer of sound
that cradles & thrusts this momentum makes me want to fight for it. makes me want to fight.
i will fight. there’s no stillness only this here.
TINA ZAFREEN ALAM is a diasporic Bangladeshi poet who doesn’t believe in space, time, or borders. Currently based in Toronto, she loves J Dilla and Wong Kar-Wai, and completed her MFA in Writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. You can find her poems in Panorama: A Journal of Intelligent Travel, Cosmonauts Avenue, FreezeRay Poetry, and elsewhere. When she is not writing, she is reading, listening to music, dancing, cheering on her only known sibling Kyle Lowry of the Toronto Raptors, communing with the city’s squirrels, or looking at pictures of her niece and nephew, Amaya and Ducky.
