In Nemidoonam, the startling debut pamphlet by Nasim Rebecca Asl, the poet explores the intricacies of language, identity and belonging. Her poems take us on a journey through childhood into young adulthood while weaving between a range of worlds, both in the UK and abroad. Read three poems from the collection exclusively here at BooksfromScotland.

Nemidoonam
By Nasim Rebecca Asl
Published by Verve Poetry Press

The meaning of my name

Nasim: Here we have the winds of summer lassoed into letters. You will

arrive unannounced to bloom carnations on a stranger’s dusty cheeks and allow the pink of their blood to dance. A welcome addition to the driest of days. A relief for parents used to a firstborn’s sirocco and hurricane gale. You are temporal. Altruistic. Zephyr. Comfort bringer. You are a wordeater (just like your mam), a force of nature, a racoon-eyed windflower of a girl. You were serenaded by aeolian machines for the first nine nameless days of your life. Tubes billowed breath into your miniature lungs. It may take a while for the gust to carry you to yourself. For you to learn to breathe alone.

Despair not – you are imbued with meaning.

For more famous Nasims please see: Pedrad, where comedy cancels the immigrant experience; Prince, where violence is performative; or Shah, a shadow who goes by

the more pronounceable Naz.

we are nine and playing princesses

arms spiralling like sycamore seeds

we careen from one end of the big yard to the next.

grey pleats fan from our empty hips like ballgowns.

scalloped socks slide down our tiny ankles.

the plaits trailing behind our pigtailed heads are budding wings.

if we lay down in our shadows we’d be dwarfed.

you decree so we spin and spin and spin and spin until

grass is sky and clouds are daisies. we tumble,

flushed, limbs skidding on tarmac, knees grazed, breathless.

on bruised elbows i cross my legs to look at you.

when the war cry breaks out our classmates scatter like dandelion seeds.

i make a wish, then we’re up and running from the yard

across the field, down the hill away, away from the power

of the boys nipping at our small heels. i am faster than you,

a berry-brown waif already used to fleeing the rumbling of a man.

your fingers stretch for mine. i pull you behind me.

ignore my bursting heart, the mess of moths rising

in the dust of my stomach i can’t catch my breath

but as i turn to your buttercup hair my chin is glowing –

you are the most beautiful thing my short life has seen.

i don’t know what this means. i release your milk-bottle fingers,

let a boy with hair as gold as yours snatch you instead.

i’m glad that he’s not old or bold enough to pucker up.

your lips stay apple-red.

after school, i open my snow white diary

write i’m scared i might love girls, re-read my unjoined letters,

bury them in felt tip, slam shut the book, and feed it

to the monsters under my bed

Ode to Sinners, 63 Newgate Street

Here’s to staying out past 2am

for the first time in three years.

Here’s to floors awash with booze,

beer, vodka, mixer, sticking to our shoes.

Here’s to bass drumming in our ribs,

to guitarbeats, remixes so loud we are pressed

like shells to each other’s ears to shout secrets

no one else can hear. All the club’s a stage.

Here’s to toilet paper trains trailing heels

down the bathroom’s aisle. Here’s to sisterhood

in the ladies’, to rants about men, to extolling the virtues

of strangers you’ll never see again. Here’s to dancing.

To exorcising adulthood, to hands that linger,

to our favourite singers emerging from the speakers

like Mithras from rock, Aphrodite rising from the sea

sloshing around our feet. Here’s to blisters.

Here’s to being too old for going out out. To yawns

that simmer at the shores of our lips, to constellations of sweat

glimmering on our philtrums. Here’s to the cage

at the edge of all things, to the bodies still

slim enough to squeeze through the bars,

to the bright budgies writhing and thriving

and smiling inside, a melody of off-key seagulls

while their pals record videos that’ll disappear

with morning. Here’s to not caring your mascara has smudged.

Here’s to being the youngest we’ll ever be.

Here’s to not being IDed. Here’s to £2.50 trebs,

to apple-sour shots, to fingers that find each other

in the dark, to the dregs, to moonlight

spying on us past the guards at the doors.

Here’s to illicit plastic straws. Here’s to paparazzi

strobes documenting our indiscretions.

Here’s to beginnings, crowds thinning, reason dimming,

here’s to bringing the moves. Here’s to jackets

tied like ballgowns around our waists. Here’s to him

for spinning you away from the leches. Here’s to grinning

against stubbled cheeks, to tiptoes and aching Achilles,

to skin grazing, to winners, to grace, to the small back of midnight,

to coats exchanged to keep you warm, to stinging mouths,

to ears ringing for dawn, to the firefly glow of your last cigarette.

Here’s to the drunken wings we grow. Here’s to your feathers,

to how soft and light and tipsy their promise feels in my arms.

Nemidoonam by Nasir Rebecca Asl is published by Verve Poetry Press, priced £7.99.