Category: poetry

“Síle Na Gig” and other poems by Libby Hart

May 7th, 2020

Agatha

Most paintings portray you
as a placid woman bearing a salver,
as if you were offering cupcakes,
rather than the two breasts
that were sheared from your body.

If there is anguish, it’s half-hearted.
If there is blood, it’s a thimbleful.
Such feeble depictions of brutal revenge.

Some say you were then rolled
over broken pottery and scorching coals.
Another version sent you to the stake.
But does the method really matter?
It’s enough to learn you were tortured for saying, “No”.

They held you down for him and raped you for him.
They tied your wrists for him and cut off your breasts for him.
They stoked the tinder for him and burned you for him.

All the while he kept his gaze on the small fire that you made.

Note | Previously published in Cordite Poetry Review (ed. Curnow, N.), Issue 91, May 2019 (cordite.org.au).

Ursa Major

Ursus arctos horribilis

Bear-woman,
this is where the whirlwind stops.
Right here, among dark incantation.
Look around you, use those grizzly eyes,
for soon you’ll turn polar—a bulk of light
with clumsy paws. The blood-thud of constellation
shall roar inside your ears.

For now, remember the startled face,
the swift lift from grass and the bear hug embrace.
Remember his hands. Remember why your tail is longer.
Your words growl as thunder.

Note | Previously published in Wild, Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney, 2014.

Voltage

I met a death collector when night came seeping,
his spooklights harried cloud.

Each was ghostbone,
a white-hot spindle of flash then roar.

When he touched me, life cleft into after and before.

Gravedigger’s grip of lightning flower
now brands my skin for provenance.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand.
Then crack of thunder. Then lash of storm.

Note | Previously published in The Stony Thursday Book: A Collection of Contemporary Poetry, (ed. O’Donnell, M.), Limerick City & County Council, Limerick, 2015.

The Chorography of Longing

Rain.
The rain at sea.
The word, rapture.
Moonrise.
Starlit.
Blue-smoking darkness.
Its cargo of mysteries.
Phantasm and sprite.

This lonesome apartment.
This night-long sleepwalk.
How we wake in separate rooms.

This haunt of hinterland.
This homesickness.
This thudding.
Its roaring, rushing sound.
The clutch of your hair.
My hand reaching out.
An echo of satellite song.
Of siren speech.

This unbroken code.
This all-or-nothing.
Our thoughts at half-mast.

Of when to settle.
Of when to quit.
Of overworld and underworld.
Field and fallow.
Dog-bark.
Bee-hum.
Slow work.
Each wing-made murmur.

A host of sparrows in the bushes.
A qualm infusing this dark hour.
The holy well, its heft of coins.

Misfortune instead of miracle.
Lost instead of left.
Weight of unspoken words.
Of windborne memory.
Spirit-wild.
Soul-storm.
Ardent holler.
Our bodies break too readily.

Note | ‘Blue-smoking darkness’ is taken from ‘Bavarian gentians’ by DH Lawrence.
This poem was previously published in Underneath: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize 2015 Anthology, Axon Elements (International Poetry Studies Institute), University of Canberra, Canberra, 2015.

Síle Na Gig

I wish for you
to sow this field
of six senses and seven sins.

I am not wanton,
but wanting.
I call only to you.

Even in stone
this body
remembers you.

I fidget with supple invitation.
There’s nothing more than me
and this world inside of me.

Note | Previously published in This Floating World, Five Islands Press, Parkville, 2011.

Libby Hart is an award-winning Australian poet and finalist of major literary prizes. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Wild (shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards), This Floating World (shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and The Age Book of the Year Awards), and Fresh News from the Arctic (winner of the Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize). Libby has published extensively in Australia and overseas, and her work has been adapted for the stage, composed as an opera score and broadcast on radio.

For more details please refer to www.libbyhart.net

“Dear Eavan” by C. Murray

April 28th, 2020

Eavan Boland (1944-2020)

Break the glass
that holds morning's flame.
Proceed from your room— 

I have become so aware of my hands,
their folding of things
 
of too-sweet smelling fabrics
  (washing machine is crocked)
their patting of panes, pain, 
counter-pane,
administering drugs or massages to
a dying cat—
I chose not to believe your death.

Homebound,
 gardenbound,
the pitch of kids’ voices subdued
by the old ancient
box-hedge. They are out-sung

by sparrows and 
wrens jaunting through, 
skitting overhead,
fearless.
They are always present in
the halls,

their halls.

There is a bright
bright moon tonight.
Blackbirds are always last to sing,
to sound the alert
             
 It is night,
 it is night.

I lit a purple candle for you.
It smells of berries,
of hot-house pinks— 
             

© C. Murray
27.04.2020

‘Hinges’ and other poems by Jax NTP

April 27th, 2020
hinges

it is easy to obsess over small objects
paperclips spoons and q-tips when self
grooming generates silence — virginal

trumps untamable — the renunciations
of dullness do not lead to desire
with upturned hands, razors, at rest

it is easiest to use sadness as a utensil
to push people away spiders construct
traps from their abdomen then devour

daily to recoup, silk protein recycled
gouaches in lowlight, design or debris
we all think we might be terrible

but we only reveal this before
asking someone to love us
a kind of undressing — it is easy

to section and peel a tangelo
even false origin stories expose
shame — a cerebral echo chamber

when self sculpture empties
mark the focal point as hinge
hemmed, at the center, coral

since microwave romances have deceptive expiration dates

i brush my teeth at his place now, but that’s not the point
scuba means self contained underwater breathing apparatus
he kisses me urgently mid chew ginger garlic fish sauce

in public, no pressure, no hesitation, and this is mos def not the point
chemistry is important since we cannot manufacture it out of raw necessity
Drake’s first line in Finesse is I want my babies to have your eyes

despite incoming or ongoing variables what is the function of “x” why tell
a stranger or a lover your problems when you can use it as a chance to
punish those around you — make haste and hail to the queen of non-sequiturs

on my critical thinking roster i can’t pronounce the name “FNU”
in countries where newborns are left post war now privileged
strangers greet them as “first name unknown” a haunting aqualung

nerve damage after dead relationships may result in tooth decay
when you are tasting: the first taste acclimates the palate, the second
establishes a foundation, and the third taste is to make a decision

since you’re an expert of creating a crisis out of empty nostalgia
can i get a metaphorical forklift for all my emotional baggage?
the accumulation of plaque cannot be resolved by few weeks of flossing

what is lost can be found in the biological studies of an oyster or was it an orchid
or was it of a clitoris — quick what’s a common fishing blunder? let me noodle
around with this for a while before i get back to you

the anatomy of beaches: 3 on west coast, 14 on east coast
your absence has reached comical heights Charlie Chaplin
himself would rise from the dead to have a laugh at us

is this my grave or my mother’s womb?

it upsets me when my mother thinks
my poetry is silly. the word “silly”
comes from the old english word “selig”
meaning happy, healthy, and prosperous.

in german, “selig” means to be blessed:
but consecrated and made holy with what?
when a title, silly, precedes the name
of a person, their identity, vigor, and

passion are reduced to the relevancy
of a car alarm. i failed to master french
and vietnamese. my mother has a myriad
of domesticated excuses to not speak

the english language. it complicates
the process of checking and rechecking
the meaning of words in results
to the drowning of palettes in sand

dunes of iodine soaked palm fronds.
a car alarm without a car is not just an alarm.
as mother calls poetry silly, she shucks
and drains the basket of mussels and oysters

in the sink, shucking and draining
with such a lonely authority, the way
a businesswoman shucks off her nightgown,
the way a flaccid regime shucks off

its totalitarian characteristics. my mother
is above logic, she cannot be subpoenaed,
even under oath in court she will not admit
to stating that my poetry is trivial. in the kitchen,

i read her a line from Marcel Proust, happiness
is beneficial for the body, but it is grief
that develops the powers of the mind
but she isn’t listening.
```
lessons in taxidermy

my armpits have been secreting scaled sadness
for months grommeting new ways to chew 
	linea alba fat tongue teeth grinder agenda
		sleep as prize for insomniacs somnambulists
consolation mantra safe alignments cold mala 
	beads rotates between index and middle silence
	betrays never thought i’d feel this kind of hesitation
		my hands on another girl its more than taxing
the way you take control ocean jasper too often
	longing arcs expose vagueness seek excitement
		in the mundane fingers on pulse fingering 
		when did withholding become attractive
knuckles hungry for pelvic bone quick terse
	confession sharper than indigenous peppermint 
		are tactile feedbacks are satisfying imps
		important lines lost between the years skin folds 
if emptiness is a pretense, a breached duality, an unearthing
	without dirt rebound is proof of grief interrupted here
		taxonomy of queen bees a dozen to please you
```
🌺 Link to ”a nesting of queer epiphanies in an invisible cat’s cradle” [PDF] Jax NTP

‘Hinges’ and other poems © Jax NTP

Jax NTP holds a Master in Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach. NTP teaches critical thinking, literature, and composition at Golden West College, Irvine Valley College, and Cypress College. NTP edits fiction and poetry for The Offing Magazine, Indicia Lit, and By&By Poetry. NTP’s words have been featured in various publications including Berkeley Poetry Review, Apogee Journal, Hobart Literary Magazine, San Diego Reader, The Cordite Review, and Berfrois.
‘Fold’ and other poems by Kay Liston

April 20th, 2020

Fold

Melded into the metal door at the back of the old Alhambra,
Sheltered by a short canopy that still boasts the glory of its stained green glass,
Maurice tries to move his frozen arm.
All feeling fails him, as he pumps the fingers of his right hand.
The thumping heart rhythms in his ears boom like a bodhran beat.
He is all sensation and no sensation.
Thoughts dart around like the discarded wrappers that visit him briefly, before being whirled away.
Beyond his own breath and the coursing of blood and the cyclonic breeze, he hears nothing.
The fevered morning footfall on the Main Street is as unaware of Maurice as Maurice is of them.

The Pint

The persuasiveness of the cold, wet amber
Pushes the last wisp of resolve firmly to one side,
Revealing all the old desire.

Sixteen years, aging and maturing
In a vinaigrette of 12 step hope and his mother’s prayers
Hasn’t quenched the fire

Bad days and holy days and Saturdays
All steered well, but not today
Today he is too tired

Eyes off the road, off the goal, on the pint,
Resting in the familiar flow, the gentle tide
That is going to lift him higher.

Suitcase

“Suit yourself”
His face, a pale, damp mask of resignation, turns to nod towards the door.
“You whore….And take your damn dog with you!
Aye, and all your traps…
your blasted cuckoo clock and lamps,
And all the stuff that drives me quare!”

Riled again,
he strides the stairs, two steps at a time
And pitches all his grasp can hold, regardless.
“Bitch” he mutters as they tumble down;
a scarf,
a quilt,
a dressing gown…

“Take them all”
He sighs; his anger finally spent.
He feels the silence creeping all around him.
Sleep will fill the hollow soon, then dawn will wake the memory of her leaving,
Taking one small case, nine years ago.

Autopilot Porridge

Putting the funk in function, you stumble around the room
Odd socks on hardened feet, turned out to meet the world; hopefully.
Hopeful of forgiveness?
Or maybe just fatigue…
A deep tiredness that will overlook your transgressions from the night before.
Wretchedness that will acknowledge wretchedness, like some second cousin; similar but different.
Hopeful that our 35-year dance will allow you to make your porridge in peace…
and move on.

© Kay Liston

Kay Liston is a retired youth worker and active member of a Listowel writing group. She has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember.
“The First Casualty of the Summer” and other poems by Emily S. Cooper

April 19th, 2020

The First Casualty of the Summer

Can a dropped ice cream be a joyful sight?
A slight of thought, akin to road kill: a dead badger
is still a badger that was once alive.

Can a spark of juvenile pride (the curl tightly
looped to touch the forehead of the whipped pile)
be saved from extinction

once it lies, semi-freddo on the pavement?
Losing shape and form and purpose –
a small death or not one at all.

(Published by Banshee)

Notions of Sex

I have conversations in my head with my ex about how I don’t even want sex anymore that I could have it if I wanted it/ that men still look at me/ I see them looking at me it’s not a competition/ I say/ but if it was I would be winning/ I feel my body born anew without touch/ I can’t even imagine being touched/ my skin is ashy with resistance/ my hair is falling out/ I’m hungry all the time but I have no appetite/ I think about the trees I’m planting/ even though I am leaving soon/ will anyone water them?/ I admire the dirt under my fingernails/the rose thorn scratches up my knees even my sweat smells different/ ferrous/ as if I am rusting/ I find old nails in the soil unbent/ I hammer them into the dry stone wall / and tie the pear tree to the wallit/ it needs support though it is too young for fruit/ I leave orange peels on the window sill and / feel embarrassed by my nipples as I drink my coffee/ I think at this point I should talk about masturbation/ but I don’t feel like it/ there is a rotten mattress abandoned on my street/ I look to see if anything is hidden in the springs/ there is nothing/ across the wall is the river/ a shag swims past/ later it will dry its wings on a rock/ the tide comes in and goes out faster than I can look out the window/ I miss the turn/ in the woods I feel the trees around me like bodies/ I have read that there is a chemical peace from trees/ I imagine we are sardines together/ me and the firs/ upright/ refusing to lie down on the needly soft ground/ there is a greenhouse on the path/ the glass is all broken/ the pleasure of smashing windows comes back to me/ on building sites as a child/ one after another/ the softness/ the trajectory followed through/ we hold up a hose to a pile of sand/ pretend it’s a penis and piss holes like in snow/ a man in shorts waves to me from his bike/ compliments my dog/ no one catcalls anymore/ I was followed once/ in a small town/ I was about twelve/ it got dark but I got away/ you don’t forget the feeling of someone watching you round a corner/ is it better not to be watched at all?/ there are new blinds on the windows/ now the locals know whether I’m in or not/ I’m told you’re not a local until you get a set of binoculars/my eyesight has returned/ I forgot my glasses one day and never used them again/ I rub myself with oils/ take tablets to reduce my heat/ my face burns with irritation/ people think I’m angry/ they’re only half wrong/ but I’ve learned to smile in a better way/ let it rise to my eyes/ bare my teeth/ I reel away from hugs/ I don’t want to hold hands/ I sit on the steps in the garden/ sunny stones warm me/ I lie down.

(Published by Hotel)

Old Lives

Perhaps if things hadn’t turned out
The way they did, and I hadn’t left
Eight years before, jumping in beside
Daddy in the car, placing the flower
My boyfriend had given me on the dashboard
Perhaps if the waves had been more violent on
The Irish Sea that crossing, if perhaps
I had taken that as a sign and turned back
Commandeering the wheel
Pushing the captain aside Get out
Of my way and sailed back to Scotland
Taken up a job in an allotment
Worked things out with the Greek
Then ditched him later for a tall Scottish
Fella called something like Reuben or
Robin who played in a folk band
Perhaps I would have been happier

Perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten that stomach ulcer
And Daddy wouldn’t have confused
His cancer for a matching ulcer
They’d just cut it out in time and
We could have gone to the Venice Biennale
That year, like we talked about
Me laughing at his conservative tastes
How he figured craft was of utmost importance
Not this conceptual drivel
Cast a cold eye
On life, On Death
Horsemen pass by!
He’d chant as we walked along canals
Missing the dog at home
That would not jump in a river
And stove its head in the next summer
Perhaps we would all finally learn
How to get along at Christmas
To sit down and eat in peace without
Someone breaking a glass or shouting
About the unfairness of it all
And I’d go back to Glasgow to my empty flat
Get my cat back from the catsitter
Open the window and
Drink a glass of cheap French brandy
To bring in the New Year.

(Published by Hotel)

Incredible Things Do Happen

A tiny person at Edith Piaf’s grave
turned to my parents
and told them
I am her sister.
Her bones were birdy,
twisted and brittle,
like those left on the number 171,
stripped of flesh, in a small cardboard box.
Her body doubled in on itself
forehead reaching closer
to the concrete of the tomb,
her stick the only thing contriving
to separate the two.
Perhaps it was a lie.
Whoever this woman was,
she’s in the Repertoire now,
joining the Kennedys playing baseball
in their garden in Cape Cod,
an immigration inspector who flipped
my mother’s passport photo off
with her long acrylic nails
and the young man who presented my aunt
with a huge bunch of flowers in Neary’s,
apropos of nothing.

(Published by Butcher’s Dog)

The First Casualty of the Summer and other poems © Emily S. Cooper

Emily S. Cooper is a graduate of Goldsmiths and the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s. She has been published in Stinging Fly, Banshee, the Irish Times and Hotel among others. She has been awarded residencies by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Greywood Arts and the Irish Writers Centre. In 2019 she took part in Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series and was a recipient of the Next Generation Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. She has been shortlisted for the Mairtin Crawford Award, North West Word Poetry Prize and was highly commended for the Patrick Kavanagh Award. She is currently writing a monograph on solitude, a collaborative collection with Jo Burns on the muses of Picasso, and her first poetry pamphlet will be published by Makina Books in 2020. She lives in Donegal and is represented by Harriet Moore at David Higham Associates.
“Soon” and other poems by Lisa Bain

April 17th, 2020

Soon

“Let’s get together soon,”
without setting a date
is the tactic we always use
to keep others on the line
without actually giving of our time.
You’ve made it clear you don’t have time for me,
so why would I tell you my secret
when everything would have to change?
I’m torn.
I’ll be a burden either way.
I’m stuck trying to decide which is more humane.
Do I inject grief now into your too busy timeframe?
Or wait and risk you maybe cursing my name
because I didn’t give you the chance to say goodbye?
I tried to tell you in my wordy way
but forgot you never read what I write,
so wouldn’t know I was going away.
The words are just too hard to say.
So sure,
let’s get together soon.
Someday.

Bubbles

Swamp bubbles lurched from the mud below
belching the stench of repressed memories I hadn’t let go.
Forgotten trauma attacked in waves,
pain and self-loathing vomited in saving grace.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my fist,
I staggered to my feet,
this memory I would no longer resist.
Screaming my rage across the sky,
the swamp fell silent, still full of dark stains left to die.

Umbrella

We didn’t have an umbrella but,
laughing, you grabbed my hand.
Those Irish blue eyes were dancing
as you pulled me along,
dodging cars and cold November raindrops.

Inside a turf fire was burning.
Hot whiskey in hand,
we leaned in to hear over pub noise.
And despite the late hour,
we yearned to linger.

But we left once we were dry,
laughter subdued as confusion took hold.
The fire had warmed more than intended.
Were we becoming more than friends?
The opportunity to find out
washed away with the last of the rain.
We didn’t have an umbrella.

Too Small

No one hears my screams as I claw,
bound and trapped,
by barbed wire skin
two sizes too small.
I bleed and can’t catch my breath.
Why did I put it back on at all?

Blind

My heart is surely going blind.
I used to know every fleck of gold
In your hazel eyes,
Even if mine were closed.
I can’t see your eyes anymore.
I panic when I stumble and bump into the pieces of the old me
I no longer recognize; the ones I never put away.
The ones that now make me trip and fall.

My heart has gone deaf.
I used to hear the sound of your voice
Even if you were far away.
Like a buoy ringing out on a foggy sea, calling me home.
Now I can’t hear you at all.
In silence, I wreck upon the rocks and frown.

So I stare at photos, holding them close to my dying eyes,
And watch you get blurry and fade.

Please don’t disappear.

Soon and other poems © Lisa Bain

Lisa Bain became a young widow in 2016 after losing her husband to cancer. She quickly learned we live in a grief-phobic society that isolates the grieving even further. The Boise-based author began writing to work through the grief process. With both humor and heartbreak, she incorporates grief and bereavement issues into her poetry, short stories and her debut novel Heart of a Kingdom (The Light Network, 2019). Her poetry focuses on snapshots of love, death, and starting over. Sometimes they rhyme. Read Lisa’s website here

📓A Widow’s Guide to Self-Isolation.

“Bitter Gourd” and other poems by Nishi Pulugurtha

April 15th, 2020

Bitter Gourd

The dense green is a nice photo-op
I hold the mobile in my hand
As I look around for something that grabs my attention
I notice a bitter gourd hanging beautifully
The leaves creeping here and there
Entwining with the dead branches fallen all over
Hues of green and brown
I see another one peeping from behind
A small one
Ridged
Fallen seeds and nature’s work
Among all the dirt, there it was
Pushing back so much of the unwanted
Breaking out
Pushing
Carving a small place
Being seen
Uncared but there.

Overhead

Noun
Cost of expense
Such as lighting, equipment
Any little extras
Paid for out of a fund
For medicines?
For fruits and vegetables?
For groceries?
For staples?
For a child’s education?
For living generally . . .

The electricity bill is too steep
The main is switched off
The old lady sweats in the heat
But then who cares.
The ‘overhead’ needs to be curtailed.

My Son

The worship of the goddess is done
The festivities are all over
Durga is Shakti, power
Why do we pray to her?
When the wife is ill-treated
Insulted, humiliated, burnt, kicked, stifled, chained, mistreated.
No one bothered about me in my marital home
Marital house
It is only after my son was born that they began to behave well towards me.
Am I just a womb?

Does it Really Matter

Some might talk
Some judge
Some arrive at conclusions
Some read things into it
Why? What made you?
Loads of questions
Questions on questions
Everyone seems eager to find out
Inquisitive, Curious
Prying
Questions that needn’t require answers

Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is an associate professor in the department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College and has taught postgraduate courses at West Bengal State University, Rabindra Bharati University and the University of Calcutta. She is the Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata (IPPL). Her research areas are British Romantic literature, Postcolonial literature, Indian writing in English, literature of the diaspora, film and Shakespeare adaptation in film. Dr. Pulugurtha has presented papers at national and international conferences in India and abroad and has published in refereed international and national journals. She is a creative writer and writes on travel, film, short stories, poetry and on Alzheimer’s Disease. Her work has been published in The Statesman, Kolkata, in the anthology Tranquil Muse and online – Café Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House and Setu. She guest-edited the June 2018 Issue of Café Dissensus on Travel. She has a monograph on Derozio (2010) and a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019).

Poems by Christine Murray at Indelible (AUD)

April 11th, 2020

download Issue 3 of Indelible (AUD) at this link🌹

Indelible

Christine Murray lives in Dublin with her two children Tadhg and Anna. Her poetry has been widely published, both in print and online, in chapbooks, anthologies, and journals. She founded and edits Poethead; A Poetry Site that is dedicated to platforming work by women poets, their translators, and editors. She is an active member of Fired! Irish Women Poets and the Canon which seeks to celebrate and draw awareness to the rich cultural heritage of Irish women poets through awareness-raising and reading. She currently curates the Fired! archive at RASCAL (Research And Special Collections Available Locally- Queen’s University, Belfast).
Christine Murray’s latest poetry collection “Gold Friend” is forthcoming in Autumn 2020 with Turas Press, Dublin.

Poethead Website: http://www.poethead.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/celizmurray
RASCAL: http://www.rascal.ac.uk/institutions/fired-irish-women-poets-and-canon

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‘Irish’ by Paul Celan

April 11th, 2020

Poethead by Chris Murray

Irish
Grant me the right of way
over the cornstair to your sleep,
right of way
over the path of sleep,
the right to cut turf
on the shelf of the heart,
come morning.
by Paul Celan

Irish is by Paul Celan from Fathomsuns and Benighted, trans Ian Fairley. Carcanet Books, 2001.

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“Lady Jesus” and other poems by Arathy Asok

April 4th, 2020

They ask me questions
I will not answer

They have come to ask of me,
Many answers they sought.

They did not look at my breasts,
Or between my legs.

It was my eyes,
And inside my head they probed.

They put out their hands
And broke open my skull;
They looked in to see
What thoughts I hid
Between the folds of my brain,
The slime, the blood, the people.

They wanted to know what it was from them
I was going to take,
Which were the hands I held,
What were the forests that I walked,
The words I nursed,
Like hot iron branded in my soul;
They look to see
What crowds were being formed,
That thought of the little raped girl,
The boy who wrote poems
And was jailed,
Of the pregnant woman
With the stillborn child in her lap.

And when they put back the pieces together
They looked to see
If I was one of them.
That was what they wanted
After all;
To know if I was one of them.

Or if I was the one
That stood outside their door,
With my fingers raised
In questions.

YELL

Gujarath.
You sting me still.

When they come out in the night
Their torn wombs hanging with dead children
Their shaven head branded with “OM”
Their vaginas split open
Their breasts bitten broken.
When he* walks around me
His calls unanswered, thrice,
When they torment him more
As he refuses to laud their country,
His fingers chopped,
Then his hands and feet
Dragged by the fork
Thrown into fire.

He lifts his hands to me.
They lift their hands to me.

I can see it coming
The saffron gods in their chariots.
I have to tell you then,
Before it is too late,
To think.
To think.

Histories of lies that you live with,
Mounds of forgetfulness you sleep on,
The world you think secure,
Lying under your booted foot;

I have to tell you.
It is your blood.
It is your blood.

Hang your heads in shame.
Carry the skulls from the farmers.
Walk with them they killed,
Walk with the landless,
Walk with them with bewildered eyes,
Who hide in dark corners.

Your children look at you
For answers. (*Ehsan Jaffri)

NO COUNTRY TO OWN

What will people do,
Who have no city to call their own?
Whose houses are four corners they turned,
When life took them.

What will such people do,
Who long to grow roots,
But who stumble when they see faces,
Trying to recollect
Each face from a dead memory
Memory that was not born, naturally.

What would such people do,
Who want to know what it is
To dwell under the same sky,
The same sunrises and sunsets,
A meal on the wooden table
At times in the sun,
And the evenings
A circle around the tea cup.

What would they not do to swing their hands,
In the alleys ways
Knowing for sure
The next corner they must turn?

STRANGER LOVES

You are another country
I ventured into.
Blank windows
That did not latch,
But opened into
Strange skies, unknown stars.
Yet when you smiled
The ocean was another day;
And I stepped blind
Dumb, dusted, worn.
The water crept into me
Lifting into you, waved
And I drowned.

Drowned.

When I rise,
The sky in my eye
Is the blue
You left behind.

Lady Jesus

The doors are closed.
Even the windows.
No eyes blink.
I walk around the house once.
Twice. Then again.
I touch the walls to see
If they have broken.
A little hole, tiny,
Hiding from my eye
Through which I can look
Into the darkness inside.
But nothing.
The home has become a house.
She has died, rotting on the cot,
She who smiled at me like a wild gypsy,
And told me to hide love letters under the green leaves.
Without her the jackfruit tree is bald.
The fisherman does not look in.
Here again,
I wait for the wind
Under a sky
To carry some smell
That I missed
Which would pour
Water down my spine
Closing the hole they drilled,
On my hand
My feet
My breast.

SISTER WOMEN

Sister,
That mountain country you speak of,
Those women
The ones whose breasts
Were free,
Unrounded,
Hanging , lean, fleshy.
The ones whose feet were kept apart carelessly,
Who flung their hands
In wild abandon.
I see them sitting before you,
Cold tea between us.
There was no revolution, you said
No bloodshed
No foreign flags.
None.
I saw them
Dangling their feet,
Sitting on the rocky hill,
Looking into the blue sky.
And I saw their ankles,
Chainless, soft, pink
And soles, the soles of their feet
Where rough roads
Met
Violently fusing desires.
I saw them,
Sister,
I saw them laughing aloud
I saw the toothless gums
And the toothed ones
The wide-open mouths
The ringing echoing far away.
I saw them hold hands;
And your eyes, sister,
Your eyes,
That spoke of this dream
To be born at home.

Muslim, Rohingya, Three years

Sometimes there is a little bit of me sticking out like red meat.
The flies swarm around it.
I know there is rot spreading a little from the edges.
It started the moment I saw the little girl floating in the water.
A Rohingya, she floats from Myanmar to my doorstep,
When we are getting ready with the flower carpets.
Her face is bloated. Her eyes closed.

On her red dress, the butterflies are still alive, flitting on
the half-opened flowers.

She does not seem surprised.
Where are the others who walked with her?
The mother whose hand she left the moment the water took her in?
The sister she laughed with a moment ago?
The father she looked from afar?
The brother who carried her around?
The friends under the tree with whom she played before they came to kill?
I cannot see them. The water is cold where she floated bit by bit into my eyes.
Was she a Muslim? Was she Budha’s enemy?
I do not know.
The moment I saw her face I felt the rot spreading,
And now I am almost dead.
It is not the water. I know.
It is not the Buddha. I know.
I saw him close his eyes in prayers, like she had closed hers in death.

Lady Jesus and other poems © Arathy Asok,

Arathy Asok’s debut collection Lady Jesus and Other Poems is described by the Journal of Commonwealth Literature as “Resistance poetry with a sharp edge” (2019, Vol. 54(4) ). She is a bilingual writer and was featured poet at The Blue Nib Magazine (Issue 37, Ireland). Her poems have appeared in national and international journals, in print and online (in Samyukta, Poetry Chain, anti-heroin chic, Poets in Nigeria, Blue Nib magazine, Door is Ajar, Womaword Press and Culture Cult). They are included in an Anthology called Native Petals, Nocturne and Iliyali (USA). Her short stories in Malayalam have appeared in Madhyamam Weekly and English short stories in Rupture (Pakistan), Credo Espire (USA) and have been translated to her mother tongue and published in Indian Express Malayalam Online.

Category: poetry

Agatha

Ursa Major

Voltage

The Chorography of Longing

Síle Na Gig

hinges

since microwave romances have deceptive expiration dates

is this my grave or my mother’s womb?

Fold

The Pint

Suitcase

Autopilot Porridge

The First Casualty of the Summer

Notions of Sex

Old Lives

Incredible Things Do Happen

Soon

Bubbles

Umbrella

Too Small

Blind

Bitter Gourd

Overhead

My Son

Does it Really Matter

They ask me questions I will not answer

YELL

NO COUNTRY TO OWN

STRANGER LOVES

Lady Jesus

SISTER WOMEN

Muslim, Rohingya, Three years

They ask me questions
I will not answer