Thomas Kretz
Abaya Goodbye
Does not cover but frees,
Does not enclose but liberates,
Jihan taught her children fancies
With more guilt than her own mother
Who believed in the wrap of protection
From an evil world first women had made.
The dark gauze spinning
Round and round for centuries
Creating cocoons of coy privacy
For men awaiting heaven’s sevenfold,
Butterflies only at home with mastoids,
Shorn of growths and all tufts of humanity.
Turned into sheer tanks
armored against the piercing
shells of infidel eyes, even worst
still appreciative, left a narrow slit
to stare defiance, able to pass sentries
who dare not search for a concealed Uzi.
Page(s) 88
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