Grieving Shias

Recently got Raza Ali Hasan's Grieving Shias, a collection of poems published through The Sheep Meadow Press in 2006. What a read. The review by Stanley Moss is accurate, and I agree that with these poems the "architecture is American fusion, Mughal, post-colonial, colonial, sometimes peasant, sometimes Syracuse motel."

The first poem from Grieving Shias:

"Mourning and Other Activities"

You take the Faith and a horse--
reasonably Arab looking one--feed him
rusgullas and milk for a year.
While you fatten him you terrorize him
with different Asiatic techniques
into mildness and meekness.

Then you take a procession or two
out in the month of June
with the horse leading
properly bedecked with buntings and ribbons.
You mourn and cry your heart out in the heat.
Those of us who have faith
then crawl under the belly of the horse
whenever it comes to a stop.

Between the four brown hooves
take refuge from the sun.