1 poem
by Fargo Tbakhi
Fargo Tbakhi (he/him) is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his writing can be found in Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Mizna, the Shallow Ends, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. He is a Halcyon Arts Lab fellow and works at Mosaic Theater.
This poem was longlisted for the 2020 Peach Gold in Poetry with guest judge ALOK.
ghazal-sonnet crown for failure and tonya and baba and queers and me
and tonya harding always was a failure
i love her from my little seat of failure
my impoverished violent slice of love
o face of heaven jawbone made of failure
and if i learn to be a better subject may
tonya’s skate eviscerate me o may failure
spit me from its mouth and god refuse
to let me in again o tonya how your failure
lets me breathe o tonya i remember you
in the dream of nations i beg for failure
i beg the ice to keep you in my favorite
moment of the jump when your failure
tears away from hiding claims its space
says i am the lace of blue golden failure
tonya sequin triple axel never landed stumbling to a better world in failure
tonya sequin triple axel never landed stumbling to a better world in failure
o the arab way i move my hips is failure
o my baba his criminal hands return
to me like tonya’s broken lace of failure
too much power in baba’s hand in tonya’s
thigh in my imagined asshole’s failure
tonya never woman never wealthy never
subject never baba never good citizen failure
makes us ruptures in the nation’s languaging
emblems of a wily terrorist failure
evidence of structures less than caring o
all my fellow queers o all my failures
national embarrassments we piss utopic
strands of worlds beyond the cry of “failures o for nothing good o failure”
strands of worlds beyond the cry of “failures o for nothing good o failure”
pieces themselves a fire quilt for failure
tonya too much power in her self-preserve
“alive” our anticapital our failure
all maimed all built on waver lack destruction
baba my abject o my most excellent failure
who refuse your goodness who deny your threat
i’m asking every love to join our failure
to fail is to be nightmare for the ones who
call evictions on our mess sick drones on failure
a skate a blade that holds survival and its failure
too because we do not always live
but between death or living not a failure
i breathe my last good hex and cause a landlord to collapse victim of failure
i breathe my last good hex and cause a landlord to collapse victim of failure
and landlord is the court declaring baba failure
the skating association keeping tonya
in abuse her drama too ugly too failure
for the nation to digest o tonya let’s
be undigestible shard of glass failure
impoverished desiring stabs of wretched
entrypoints to love and god through failure
let’s be borderless spitworthy nasty fruits
let’s turn a fist from threat to gift with failure
let’s love the trash because it’s trash and not because
it could be something “better” no better just failure
all my friends are here and they are useless o failure
let’s not be used but only useless marinate in angry fuck you failure
let’s not be used but only useless marinate in angry fuck you failure
tonya teaches me to hide my goodness failure
teaches me it is not real o capital
finds me lacking fascists find me lacking failure
lets me know lack is my best way of living
all my useless friends we glory threats we lack
each other until we are moaning failure
o someone spits upon me and i love it o
someone flips a blade i see a skate o failure
someone holds me down i feel like power
excess is my only love my filth my failure
my unplaceable my anti my against
o i’m begging and i love to beg in failure
empire museum bank and prison quiver at my failure
empire museum bank and prison quiver at my failure
i break until the ice must join me failure
and dancing to paulina’s track is failure
i fall asleep on hazem’s shoulder a failure
o willie and i finding birds our failure
blythe and i shouting at halberstam whose failure
opened up my breath and o my nipples failure
my card declines the state decrees my failure
i rejoice i car into the swamp my failure
i tongue baba’s indictment til it’s failure
breaks me into pieces and breaks are failure
let me be sugar in concrete bring about its failure
me and every one i love will scream o failure
never trade this brokenness for any less failure
never trade this brokenness for any less failure
and o my “thank you” sounds like “failure”
failure god i failure baba failure willie
george o failure benny failure blythe i failure
brandon failure natalie failure nick and noor and ellie
i failure all my gorgeous bleedings failure
tonya my poverty my losing my hungry
never stilled too powerful for nation failure
my sewing clothes my broken jump my
femme hip sway my fairuz nose my failure
my improper violent subject destruction collective
break in the rightness of this world o i failure
know that this queer always wants to be a tonya o
and tonya harding always was a failure