Jaz Sufi

Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

Ode to My Lover’s Sequined Dress

by Jaz Sufi

                                        & the matching blazer, too—

all of those sequins flirting with the light like every one
of them is trying to fall in love tonight, they are new

               & eager & trembling

against their stitches, much like how my breath flutters
& forgets itself every time i see you across the room,

     every time.

it looked so lifeless on its hanger, still until its first sharp gasp
as i dragged its zipper up your spine like a tongue,

                                        & yes, i’m not ashamed

to admit i counted each sequin as i did so, eager,
exalting. the neckline, dripping so far down

      i dropped to my knees

so my mouth might catch its kaleidoscopic splatter. still, though,
i thought first of the body below, sweetened

     curve of shoulder & the hip

sugared when i craved salt, i imagined lifting the gold necklace
like a veil to taste what trace of metal might remain.

                                                      what is beauty,

i thought, if not what my lover bares to me in the dark? what lies
shadowed beneath my lover’s shadow?

       how wrong i was—

hours later i see you across the room, peacock flocked
by other brilliant birds, constellations orbit around you

     & my pulse forgets its place,

the flowers on my own dress straining towards your sun.
you laugh & the champagne shivers in every glass.

                                        everyone loves you here,

all of our hearts standing in ovation, our eyes gilded
with honey from its comb. how lucky we are to see your dress’s debut.

       a coronation, a crown

too tender to be gold. at first i saw each sequin as a mirror
reflecting, but now i know them all to be prisms refracting

              you & your infinite wonder,

your spectrum of limitless love, streaming out & striking
like lightning gentled by your touch. what is beauty? this is it, i think,

                                                everything everything all all.

the dress, the matching blazer, & how they summon you to the surface,
all yourself & in this moment most yourself, your release & return,

       loved, beloved,

comet speeding towards an open-armed crowd,
gold dust shed from a fruit-skinned star,

              a gift, a gifting,

a blossom forge, petals & pleasure cracking the anvil
open like a window & broken like a fever—

                                        my lover         (you)

every mode of glitter stands before me in a gown.
each breath i take is drawn like water from your well.

       here: let me give

as i have been given to. later, i’ll unclench the zipper’s teeth
as i tug it down your back, but for now, let me just sip at your shimmer,

              let it split me open from the inside out.

About the Author

Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She is the current Poet Laureate of San Ramon, CA, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.

Queer Poem-a-Day

Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.