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Jaia Hamid Bashir, born to Pakistani immigrant artists, is the author of the poetry collection The Afterlife of Sweetness (Ohio State University Press, 2026) and the chapbook Desire/Halves (Nine Syllables, 2024). The winner of the 2024 Charles B. Wheeler Prize and the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Utah.

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  • The Brute

    by Jaia Hamid Bashir
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    Instead of the ocean, I pocket the moon

    of an oyster shell from a dim restaurant

    in Barcelona. We drink the dregs

    and boast of dead sailors, bitter and salt heavy,

    from the shell’s mouth. The sea tastes sweeter

    like this, and I forget about the gyres, swirling

    like black bulls, islands the size of cities. If I were

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