Utah poet Jasmine Khaliq.

On September 9, Jasmine Khaliq joins Lisa Bickmore and Paula Mendoza for the inaugural installment of the Ambit Poetry Series, a new monthly reading series in downtown Salt Lake City begun by poet Lindsey Webb (Books & Supply, 252 E. 100 South, SLC, 6:30 pm sharp)

Khaliq is the author of Somewhere Horses, winner of the Barrow Street Press Editors’ Prize and forthcoming from Barrow Street Press in April 2027. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, 32 Poems, Passages North, Poet Lore, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She holds a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

Two of the poems Khaliq shares with READ LOCAL come from her collection, Somewhere Horses, winner of the Barrow Street Press Editors’ Prize and forthcoming from Barrow Street Press in April 2027. “Ammi Tends to the Garden, Alone” began, she says, with the sound of a poem by the celebrated Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Khaliq’s Abu, who died when she was thirteen, loved Urdu poetry. Rather than translate Faiz’s poem, she tried to arrange English words that echoed the sounds of the original. What emerged was a poem about her grandparents, addressed “for Perveen & Abdul,” and a garden that connects family, distance and memory. “My ammi is well and her garden in California is marvelous,” Khaliq says. “I miss it all the time.”

“Rearing” also grew out of memory, this time while Khaliq was a young adult living alone in Seattle. Rain, remembered cows on hills and family photographs she had collected for an embroidery project came together in a poem where childhood recollection slips easily into the strange beauty of the present. One of those photographs—Khaliq as a baby, mouth open against her mother’s cheek—survives alongside the memory recalled in the poem.

And then there is “Charm to Separate Yourself from Another,” a prose poem offering detailed instructions involving hair, a silver dagger, dog urine, rotten grapes and the inedible parts of three fish. Khaliq’s explanation is considerably more concise: “It is a spell. I haven’t tried it. If you do, please reach out.”

Ammi Tends to the Garden, Alone

for Perveen & Abdul

Rotting until interred—could you await me?
Spring Jasmine may, lucky, herald and eye
the shift in September to autumntime. A challenge: bait seasons,
reap beginnings, mark being. Walk, qualmless, into evening after evening.

*previously published in Passages North

The poet kissing her Ammi.

Rearing

I watch from a fence
with nothing to say,
no idea what to do,
and a hand reaches out—

to whom? all the cows too far,
lying, talking, chewing,
beautiful, plain, pan flutes walking,
and seen smooth in the tops of their heads
is each phase of the moon.

the compulsion to kiss babies
I have always understood.

as a baby I kissed faces
like I wanted to eat them,

my mouth full-open,
wet against the cheek.

as a baby my feet
hardly ever touched the ground.

half my days now spent
walking, standing useless around.

Charm to Separate Yourself from Another

With silver dagger cut a lock of your hair. Cut a lock of theirs as they sleep. Braid the hair (first strand only your hair, second strand only theirs, third strand yours and theirs combined) and tie it off on either side with any dark string. Store it where ever you keep your dagger normally. Your dagger, meanwhile, must cure for nine nights in a cold pot. The pot: two parts dog urine. Half part rotten red grapes, sliced and smashed by the dagger. The inedible pieces of three fish. Do not act as if anything is amiss. After nine days retrieve the braid. In your left hand hold your dagger. Saw through the braid. Say your own name as you move towards your body, their name on the motion away. Do this until the braid is cut. Do not confuse the names even once. Dispose of the braids. Do not ever clean the blade.

*previously published by Sho Poetry Journal

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