Love Jihad

by Ashish George

My broken nose was the least of the damage

the police left behind, their clumsy hooves

toppling irreplaceable flame-bright earthenware gifts

you told me carried salt during Gandhi’s March to the Sea.

The goons shouted curses at family photos

and demanded the names of tweedy cousins born anew

in London, Toronto, New York, Cambridge—

scholarship lesbians who balked at tradition and split the difference

by eating pussy but not pork.

After the jeep hiccupped out of the courtyard

and my mother swept the archipelago of glass from the floor,

I asked no one in particular for a hadith to

silence the thumping pistons of sibilant rage.

The Prophet tore apart the moon to banish pagan doubts.

Easy to imagine his sword unsheathed to

briskly bisect those who refused him Khadijah.

I will search for you in the Quran and I will search for you between my legs,

just under the spot your fingers

provoked with powder from cardamom and clove.

I shuffled in a daze along the tawny Alleppey beach

and met the medley of braying deadbeats

holding court in a pockmarked quorum

called by whisky and boredom to jeer

the starburst of blood I paid as a debt to your hymen.

“A Hindu bride for a groom with no pride.”

“Will she prove herself with a beef dowry?”

“Book a flight to Pakistan before her father books your grave.”

Tonight they can box the ears of children who

don’t bet on laughter at the reprise.

Like a tripwire in the catacombs,

the violence we risk caught its vocation from fading skulls.

Here it’s still legal for husbands to rape their wives

and an evening’s entertainment to hang my grandfather

on his own land for raising a blade to a cow.

I am far from you now, my one and only love,

entombed with millions fastened to despair.

Forgive me for my distance and forgive this hellmouth

for wasting a delicate bounty no holy man can resurrect.