Jahangir’s Zebra by Nadir’ul-’asri Master Mansur

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A bowl of watery risotto with some herbs in a pattern of china, which the same as the two plates below it. There's a white tablecloth on the table, silverware to the right, and a water and wine glass in the background — Photo by Alexandra Tran on Unsplash

February at the V&A, manuscripts of Saadi’s Gulistan; quiet 
rubies on a dagger. You in this poem, in that room

Somewhere on all fours looking
for a cuff link. Tracing your back; a stairwell of loose

light—how I muddle
through, like a dog in a coffeehouse—

alert to sleep and sex, deploying wit to desiccate
a zealot, plying tumblers of wine. Anger’s horsehair

brazen on ice. And so, I suppress the thoughts of yanking
its braid; slitting my double’s throat to pilfer

meat. Shekure in her high, sumptuous melancholy, 
pomegranates in a white bowl. I knew this was the last winter

my poor father would ever see. Within the mind’s oak
—my double; blameless

fragrant against snow, that other life. Eye captive
to what it cannot foretell. My father squats in a courtyard

trading books and blue, spinning tops. Are you listening,
this one’s Chamkila. Wonder of the world. Salim’s zebra

and Master Mansur—he pats it between strokes,
feeding it a carrot; the zebra’s ears cocked

for its native Amharic. The self sees
starkness everywhere. You in an open

shirt making risotto, laying out a tablecloth;
profile shuddering in the night. You too need some air.

Ananya Kanai Shah

holds an MFA from New York University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Yale Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Narrative, and other magazines. Her debut manuscript was a finalist for the 2024 Fordham Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize.

You can view the painting described here.

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