POSTS

In that land under the sun, where dry heat hits bone
and in your pocket you keep a red onion
to peel flakes at 46-degrees centigrade,
male poets speak of Kamala Das and her feminist poetry,

entering a friend’s wife’s kitchen
and directing her to abandon her breakfast preparations.
They are getting late. There are no cafes in the neighborhood,
yet they depart with a caravan of 15 ravenous townspeople.

Under an angry sun, hunger hitting inside their guts,
Pied Pipers talk of timeliness, reaching a nowhere-wilderness,

while the woman in her four-walled, steeled cliché
keeps away a mountain of grated coconut over flattened rice,
sugar, coffee, and unused milk, par-boiled.
Her father was a village radical… but she tucks her wet sighs
at the edge of her sari.

As onions shrivel in our pockets with intense upheaval,
men use Urdu and Marathi verses to fight God

and the women can’t even fight the men,
who are not their husbands
because they know no poetry.

Three Women on Liberty Bridge

As the light dims, travel stills,
the bridge aligns itself to darkness,
we talk of the unveiling
of the Statue of Liberty…
after the Communist regime
(also, because she wasn’t a desi).

India, Columbia, Hungary…
through seasons of Satyugs ‘n Kalyugs
of socialism, dictatorship, democracy.

We speak of womanhood
as lovers ahead, deluded by time
track the sunset, moonrise, clasping steel locks
with catholic promises whispered over iron railings,

the stars slipping like rings around their irises
the wind blowing urgencies over the Budapest river
rippling the mirage of the parliamentarian building.

And tearing the jugular vein of centuries
we hear
all the statues of the previous regimes
were uprooted
from their old stumps and
made to stand near each other
in Statue Park,
where they are still sparring
over their beliefs
in a crossfire
under the frozen eggs of civilization.

Investigation: a report

Long before the bomb blasts
at Plaza Cinema, Zaveri Bazaar, Century Bazaar,
parking lot in Katha Bazaar, Sahar airport,
Air-India Building, Taj Mahal hotel,
Dhanji street,
the thing called kala sabun
like what my missus uses to wash our dirty utensils
was found.

We saw what we saw only in movies –
grenades, rifles, magazines, pistols,
by men we never saw on our coast
opening cartons without a smile

when their cars, jeeps, trucks
were stopped at the toll –
by customs officers
with false alerts.

And after the noise shattered
our eardrums
the police found Dr. Sapatnekar

His deep-sea divers
ebbing into 25 feet of darkness
to find brown cakes
at the bed of the Nagla creek.

They picked a broom maker,
porters, loaders, boatmen like me
who loaded sacks of iodex into jalopies
(ofcourse for minimum wages).

And two kilometers off Srivardhan
rocket-like objects, projectiles,
pipe bombs and ammunition floated
in a lake.

The men from the nearby houses were
stripped, burnt with smoldering butts,
beaten at the police station

until those turned out to be spindles
of a textile mill, overturned by a truck and
ignored by villagers who feared the police.

How none of us could say RDX.
Neither see the hindolas of revenge
for the riots of December 1992, January 1993,
were an answer to innocent Muslims killed
to avenge innocent Hindus killed
to answer innocent Indians killed.

in many Indias…

*hindola – merry-go-round

Solitary

Like light leaves after years,
iterating the static of spheres,
the orangutan exhales warmth
monographing embrace
into winter’s foliage, as time loses scope.

Young as a blank square, nurtured for years
at its mother’s teat, beat, emerging from dark art
growing from snugness, luxurious as a shaft,
it goes deep into the forest: light into cave
to live alone for a thousand years.

No ruffle, or safety of spring meets its spirit
yet as strong as an inflorescent flame
it cinders
while winter speaks in autumn’s barbed tongue.

Rochelle Potkar’s books include Four Degrees of Separation and Paper Asylum, while The Inglorious Coins of the Counting House is longlisted at the Eyewear Publishing, Beverly Prize UK. Her poem To Daraza won the 2018 Norton Girault Literary Prize. She will be a mentor at Iowa’s Summer Institute 2019. https://rochellepotkar.com.

 

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Jazz Asylum

I dusted off two generations
of fingerprint play
scored like banana leaf veins
in Etta’s shellac grooves

like old lightning
behind the ghats
vinyl black gleams taunting
in solid tones the Armstrong
loss of the gramophone

can’t hear no ‘mo
the chappal-slapping squee
and squidge of Dolphy who smiled
from a paper label
measured in diameter
and global revolution

they were once cranked up,
the stylus like a conductor
sending horns out the verandah
and vibrating The Doors
among other stored music

too bad, the world turntabled
stacked, they get wrapped
in dhobi cloth
harbouring all ticks and pops
and Beatles quietly now

no more rolling the shastras
of the Stones
to make our ears ring
in sepia, and life
doesn’t pour through the cracks
as they once did.

Mrinalini Harchandrai is the author of a poetry collection A Bombay in My Beat. Her poetry has won first prize in The Barre (2017), and was a finalist for the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize 2019. Her (as-yet unpublished) novel was selected as Notable Entry for the Disquiet International Literary Prize 2019. Her short stories have been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2018 and selected as a Top Pick (2018) with Juggernaut Books, India. Her work has been anthologized in The Brave New World of Goan Writing 2018 and RLFPA Editions’ Best Indian Poetry 2018.

 

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Homeward Himalaya

Years from now, women become vermillion inferno,
the afterbirth of cunt-deep forest where your fingers
cede the pleasure I once promised to wear for you:
the silk of Sanskrit smoke, sapphires frosting
my mouth, Ganges garland, the begum’s bedspread
of dreams in the hope to return like a theatre of arrows
where I can’t be loved. I could leave — as we filch
a teeth of icicles stunned to glass swallowing
the saffron’s ode. I could leave —
when your breath wrestles a body of indigo-night
built into god statues with ash-filled avarice.

After the Hagiography of a Garden Lover

In Farsi, you disappear into a Hafizian moon. This is
the greening of my slit zubaan. I say it slowly —
misplaced as far as oblivescence in the urdu conscious
struck by nymphs. This night, a night brimming
with breasts of liquid shiraz. I press your lithe of panthers
to belly-sweat lucid as onyx on tambourine. When God
is a wet crescent, each prayer wakes us into mysticism.
Each collapse so mute yet finds you ravish the courtyard
with rainbows. And I know pride is primal, dangles like
honeycomb tricked into fretwork of your own desert dark
where my arms are august and starry hunger.

Rushda Rafeek is currently based in Sri Lanka. Among the works published is a nomination for the Pushcart Prize, finalist of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize (2017) and winner of the Annual Nazim Hikmet Poetry Contest (2018).

 

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HOSPITALITY

In a tribal hamlet near Karjat, a hut’s vacated
so our scout pack may rest up for the night.

We’re invited to dine with our displaced host;
milled grains cooked on a clay stove fueled

by wood chips and dry cow dung pats. Squatting
on hard-packed earth, we share canned offerings

that prove unpalatable to our patron’s brood;
their own are tinged with soot and generosity.

We avail of nature’s facilities out in the fields,
hand-pumping well water to brush our teeth;

then, turning down the wick of a soot-lined oil lamp,
we swing shut the thatched door of our mud chalet.

The next morning, Sunil risks the skills of the barber;
taking the high chair in the square by a banyan tree

under which the local elders convene, smoking biris,
chewing paan, to pontificate over disputes and tithes.

Two passing village belles stare and giggle at his shorn
embarrassment; hazing his bowl-cut as ruthlessly as we.


PLATFORM

Rustled and roused from slumber on lumber,
railway tracks cracking dawn’s amethyst glow;
we trusting travelers – we takers-on and
we choo-and-hiss thiss and that-at-at as
the Express eases into Guntakal Junction.

Holed up in my upper bunk, I’m the invisible Man –
eavesdropping on my parents’ hushed concerns
for the future – through the rumble and hoot,
I absorb a simplified message, the scale of
our journey embarked into the unknown.

All day yesterday, the towns rolled by; each
station stretching my tongue further afield
as I tried to pronounce it – Thane, Kalyan,
Karjat, Khadki, Daund, Kurduvadi, Solapur –
every grinding halt to the calls of tea-vendors,
shouting “garama-garam! hot hot chai!!”
poured with panache from weathered flasks.

While we slept, the train crossed
an invisible divide into the South –
we halt at a tropical mélange, vibrant
new palette of blue, red, mango;
indecipherable signs, a vibrant intensity
of chatter and crowd, the clatter and cluck
of local hoppers transporting poultry to market.
No more calls for chai – instead, the brewy aroma
of filtered chicory coffee wafts, milky and sweet –
the South’s true miracle!

Dad has stopped at the idli vendor, buying them
steaming, dipped in butter and served on banana leaves;
spicy coconut chutney, sambar, and some of that hot coffee
to wash it down – he returns with the steaming savory cakes
and the beaming smile and twinkle he reserves only for us.

He points to the hills that crest the outskirts of town –
resting among ancient Jain and Hindu temples
and a Catholic shrine, he says,
lie the century-old tombs of two Sufi saints.
It’s known that their poetry often served to keep
the peace between rioting Hindus and Muslims;
their tombs are now a popular daytime destination.

At a discrete distance along the platform,
a group of pilgrims roll up their prayer mats;
embracing wordlessly, and only love.

Here on the platform,
everything meets everything;
everyone touches everyone
moving, mingling, connecting,
we touch and then journey apart.

With a jerk and a shudder, we’re rolling again –
picking up fast past a waking wayside world;
past ox-carts piled high with produce
picked fresh by farmer’s hand – look,
Rickshaw Max is racing us to the approaching
railway crossing, and will likely beat us to it,
whooping and grinning as he must each day.

At the daily dairy depot, milkmen
attend cascades of fresh-boiled milk
poured into their beat-up canisters,
then strapped saddle-bag-style
on their bicycles. They clamber on,
fighter pilots on a morning sortie –
a practiced wobble, a gunning of speed;
puddles and potholes skillfully cleared,
they fly off into who knows what new day.


Homeward, Bound

Mumbai 2014

1
I’m thrust into a world of diesel fumes,
air brakes, and rickshaw honks;
the catcalls of vendors hawking
loose smokes, coffee, cola,
and currencies of every hue
to the cargo cult that throngs the
Arrivals terminal at Sahar Airport.

Veering clear of polyester pantsuits
and sugar-fingered kids,
I coax a squeaking luggage cart
past lolling cops, buses, touts,
and double-parked taxicabs;
following unwillingly the once-familiar
noxious trail of sewage, and brine.

Toxic gusts of lead, chrome,
and lung-lining particulates
waft in from the sweat shops that
populate Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum –
a sprawling maze of sheds and pathways
where children raised amidst shit and
sulfides pack happy-faced toys bound
for fast-food hooked girls and boys.

Labor is on clearance here
every day of the year.
The cost of my living hangs like
a cloud over those who live
without plumbing or mattresses;
yet tend hope, nurse dreams,
and gaze up nights
at the same stars.

2
Soon, I am ensconced in my
South Bombay family’s digs –
Darjeeling tea, home-made snacks,
afternoon naps, salt-lipped breeze.
But when I step out,
I’m reminded that all trace of me
and the connections I knew are erased.

I’ve spent decades in exile,
letting go of family and friends.
Old buddies hold court at lunches
set and served by inscrutable help;
chat rotates around German SUVs,
Bollywood galas, weekend digs
a speedboat dash across the bay.

I don’t quite click in this crowd;
our shared memories long replaced
by seasons weathered,
parents passed, children born.
Building a new life in the U.S.,
obsessed with survival, then success –
I slowly forgot them all;
and they forgot me, too.

Kids of the kids I played with
now rule our street corners,
fathers’ve handed over to sons.
I pass my old neighbor Remu – watch
him double-take, furrow-browed,
and rack his brain; stirring up
something that has to have happened
once upon a time.

Born in Bombay, Art Currim emigrated to Canada in his 20’s and has since led a multifarious life as a video game director, composer, industrial designer, and entrepreneur. He is these days a writer and poet with pointed opinions on displacement, immigrant identity, and the purpose of it all. He splits his life between Los Angeles and Vancouver, and dallies around the Rest of the World as if it were a used bookstore. Art’s work is published in Tia Chucha Press’ “Coiled Serpent” Anthology, Entropy, Yay!LA Mag, Dryland Literary Magazine, and The Women Group, among others.

 

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Bhuvaneśvarī

In the dark cavern
older than knowing, I
asked her, my Queen, what
the measure of this world?

Rose from her left
palm a black thunder moon,
thrilled an arc in the air, set
bright in her right.

I was
before I was.

First things first, I
devoured her sigils, ह्रींhrīṃ
ॐoṃ, her thresholdic runes.
Rolled up the matrix
like a carpet, closed
the space between us.

It is what it is — she
threw back her head.
It is what it is — she
knocked on my chest.
It is what it is — and
we have things to do.

Kanya Kanchana is a poet and translator from India engaged in practice, teaching, and Sanskrit philological research at the intersection of tantra and yoga. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Asymptote, The Common, Exchanges, Waxwing, Muse India, and elsewhere. Her poetry was shortlisted for the 2019 Disquiet Prize.

 

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Ghazal for The Children Born Far From Home

– to my sons

Gather rotis for stray cows, scatter rice for the ragged crow
I’ve severed you from old ways, this is my sorrow

It takes practice to scoop daal with your fingers, taste spice on the honey
of your hot skin before you swallow, this is my sorrow

Rama scaled the ocean/Bheeshma died pillowed on a bed of arrows
Their ghosts in your marrow unstirring, this is my sorrow

In the bazaar you petted unblemished baby goats, you didn’t know
they were meant for slaughter, this is my sorrow

Exiled from a language where yesterday also means tomorrow
You wander thirsty with no tongues, this is my sorrow

I will be your compass, my bones are yours to borrow
My body your only true country, this is my sorrow

Yamini Pathak is a former software engineer turned poet and freelance writer. She was born and raised in India and now lives in New Jersey. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Waxwing, The Kenyon Review blog, Rattle, Jaggery, and elsewhere. She writes a monthly art column for The Hindu newspaper’s Young World publication. Yamini received much of her writing education at VONA/Voices (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation), Community of Writers, and workshops run by The Speakeasy Project and Winter Tangerine journal. 

 

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       (sonnet)



takes what fleshtones from our
kelp & ink split on dark
eyes & washed in the hers
-tory of desiring.
                                   calves
solo bare ramparts
: raw metropole’s foreclosures,
greyed.

                         if yous compelled 
     by directives & gives
     up on queer love ,   
   
         in these next night returns      
         (or jet to it, prosper!) 
     onto our declining hands 
     cold as cuts the astronomical light

                                                  … freeze in the dream stock , 
                                slid beyond best & taken freely
                                to tongues,, this

                                                  larder open to all who would stum
                                                  -ble, invitation to feast. we took

                       road beside the hill, regency cut-off 
                       spoke its news to all encountered, evening light
                       takes the day’s heat edge, & round⎯

                                cut to glass walkway, footfall quell the
                                distance of the police barricade
                                , leith,, tarmac, armour, slow smoke up 
                                -surge scene on mute / more
                                                  talk with the passing, discern
                                                  this below 

                                                                   : you, who I do not yet know 
                                                   bejewelled
                                    , tall juxt. to dark hair the light
                                              hits heels yours as the police
                                              charge the barricade beneath, smoke dou-
                                                                     sing scene / fear for
                                                                     the glass in the horse
                                                                     charge. this canteen 
                                                                belonging to students,, dive 
                                              into lift / though i block 
                                              departure to give/ask a name, voices

                                                         dropped. door crash against my frame, dark
                                                         a red jacket. take turn on these 
                                                         mechanics, liberating what foods for the flesh 


                                                                                                                         [15 july 18]

Nat Raha is a poet, musician and trans / queer activist-scholar, living in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is the author of numerous pamphlets and three collections of poetry: of sirens, body & faultlines (Boiler House Press, 2018), countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013), and Octet (Veer Books, 2010). Her work has been translated into German, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish. Nat has a PhD in queer Marxism and contemporary poetry from the University of Sussex, as is a postdoctoral researcher on the ‘Cruising the 70s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures’ research project at the Edinburgh College of Art. She is the co-editor of Radical Transfeminism zine.

 

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Massacre or Masterpiece

It’s either massacre or masterpiece, master please, let’s mass appeal to mass appease to match the ease. Seal the pores like cream or a tub of vaseline, grease the machine and forget how to dream. Ignore the means, too blind to lead, unable to see the truth from what it seems. It’s either massacre or masterpiece, a Jackson Pollock in the streets every time we bleed. They’ll always blame the seed, but you can’t fault the paint brush for the fingers’ greed. It’s either massacre or masterpiece, the top tricks are reserved for politics; it’s toxic the way they talk sick spreading ill wills selectively as if on the tips of chopsticks. So much ambition has lost it causing callous and caustic. Society is a mosh pit of agnostic bigots and cynics that mimic the very sins that cost them. Sycophants commit a sick offence, all because we aim to please – but it’s either massacre or masterpiece, and an entire population with bruised knees.

Naveed Khan was made in Bangladesh and structurally refined in various parts of Canada, most prominently in Toronto, Ontario. He was [voluntarily] institutionally reconditioned at York University, where he foolishly conceived that pursuing a profession in English education would be just and noble. This is why he types as such. You can visit his website at naveedk.com, and find him on Twitter and Instagram @_navk.

 

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