Midnight Marching for Palestine in Lubbock, Texas
October 2023
Lankans say holy beings get down from trees
at midnight and roam looking for souls to save.
Something got into our heads during that early
Halloween party. Maybe the weed synchronized with
mindless drinking and hours of nonsense:
somebody’s ex’s breakup, the new assistant prof,
my curried cashews, digging up the soil
to determine the cause for my peace lily’s demise.
Then flashed the random memory
of a road trip. Motorcycles. Che Guevara.
Bob Marley and reggae and how nobody
gives a fuck about reggae
in West Texas. Jehan was about to ping
an Uber home. Maybe he did.
Why was Sameer making out
with my doorknob? I didn’t even know
we were playing truth or dare.
Still no takers into our wild cheers
of “make-out, make-out,” who mixed
Ceasefire Now! Maybe Amir, maybe
his teenage girlfriend who wasn’t even
supposed to be drinking. In no time,
Kavin was banging the door demanding
a ceasefire! Tanisha lit up a scented Walmart
candle to make it a vigil. Few had the presence
of mind to grab their shoes, but the moon nodded
as we marched through the street. A stray dog joined.
A midnight skater stopped by and asked
if we’re all right. I gave him a hug.
As we hobbled past a fenced yard,
somebody switched on the lights
and rushed out with a rifle
primed in his hands. I froze
and pictured my brain splatter
on the sidewalk like graffiti.
He screamed and screamed.
But the others drowned out his voice
and marched on without noticing.
When the dark cavities of our eyes
finally seemed to lock, he lowered
the gun and nodded in their direction.
“Heck, don’t see why the great state
of Texas can’t form our own country,” he said.
Perfect British English – Waiting Room Edition
As part of my IELTS exam, I am here
to converse in perfect British English
with an Oxbridge-certified examiner,
waiting thirty minutes past
my scheduled interview time.
The well-travelled macho dude
who went in before me stumbles
back from the testing arena
pulling his hair. He’s lost
both muscle and color, his steely face
a messed-up toilet bowl.
The girl after me is mumbling something
paganist under a spell of demonic
possession. I eavesdrop hard and finally
make out two versions from intonation:
interrogator and tortured prisoner.
A useful tactic for the CIA to adopt…
The magazine on the coffee table advertises
English courses of all sorts from kindergarten
to the top executive, and I hope they’d expand
the catalogue for the centenarian in his deathbed
as a final blessing. A TV screen plays
countless testimony of the saved. This eclectic
mix of black, brown, and yellow faces
can’t be more blessed to learn from
our perennial white masters. Light shines
on them from above. God’s back in His
civilizing mission, but this time making us
pay out of our pockets.
Yet it bothers me not to see a single
portrait of Her Majesty, the Queen.
Or her governors of Ceylon, so that
I could recall their names we immortalized
in school, fearing the teacher’s cane
would come down like thunder
to darken our brown skin more.
As soon as my unworthy eyes
behold her grace, I vow to bow
my loyal commonwealth head!
A young local to usher me in as if
let alone that twenty feet, I’d lose
my bearings. A white dame as expected
with her name on a golden plaque
greets me: “Good Afternoon!
I’m Mrs. Jacqueline White.”
The clock behind her shows 11.35.
I waver between afternoon and morning.
After all, the English are light years
ahead of us, so I mutter an apology
for not setting my watch to their time.
“Excuse me, Some-Wood, please speak loudly,”
she instructs for my own good.
Both my hands go unto my hair.
IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is a so-called standardized test
of English proficiency for “non-native speakers” of English. It is masterminded and
administered by the unholy trinity of British Council, International Development
Program (IDP), and Cambridge Assessment English. The U.S. equivalent of IELTS is
TOEFL.
samodH Porawagamage is the author of becoming sam (Burnside Review Press) and All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths (forthcoming from Airlie Press). His writing focusses on the Sri Lankan Civil War, poverty & underdevelopment, colonial & imperial atrocities, and disproportionate impacts of climate change on rural & marginalized communities. These poems are from his manuscript brown mongrel, which is about a brownie’s tragicomic misadventures around the world while also being a celebration of brownness.
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