SHARMILA SEYYID

THREE POEMS

poems written by Sharmila Seyyid and translated by Gita Supramaniam

"I Am Composing a Song"

I am composing a song
I am writing these lyrics to tell the world
Why this contrarian path I tread.
This is my testimony.

I am a fallen woman, they say,
A prostitute...

One can be a slave of love
But to talk about sex is wrong
Bearing a child is alright, they say,
But to talk about the orifice from
Where the child comes is wrong...

Ultimately –
To state it unequivocally
The death sentence has been pronounced on me.

But till the last millisecond
Before my head is severed from my shoulders
I will live.

This is my body
My make-up
My jewellery
My clothes
My foot-wear
My odour
My language
My religion
My love
This house where I live
This road I walk on
This book I read
All these
Will remain mine
And will be what I want
Only thus will I live!

Till the last millisecond
I will live.

"Incompatible"

They were talking about my body,
My body, that lies there
Where I had cast it away.

They don’t accept me as one of them
Because they do not want to accept that I too
Can have solid views and not budge from them.
The night and the moon do not attract me, I'm not like them,
They are angry with me because I refuse
To be subjected to their black magic
And dwell in caves of inky darkness,
And become a genie - corked inside a bottle.

They do not accept
My determination to not let their strictures
Make me stray from my chosen path.
I want to confront them face to face
When they challenge me and ask,
How will you grow without any sustenance,
Without any help from the world outside you?

Those who have seen my magic wings are amazed.
My simple and plain words
Encircle them like an endless snake;
Unable to free themselves, they struggle
And stumble...

I again reinvent myself,
An even sharper me I see.
There my body still lies
There, where I cast it off.
Once more, I curb my intense urge
To embrace my body again,
Because...
Because I do not wish to become
A genie corked inside a bottle...

"That Ancient Village"

In those sandy lanes
Lined dense with Portia trees,
In those bright houses from where
Light spills out and spreads,
In the evenings filled with the fragrance of incense-sticks,
In the sound of the muezzin’s call
And in the sound of the foot-steps of the early morning
There, that ancient village still exists.

There, where I was not loved,
Where my pleas were never given ear to,
Where I was made to shed copious tears,
There, that ancient village
Still continues to exist.

Oh Eravur, my land, my soil,
Remind me again of the evidence that I left behind.
The palm-fronds I swung on,
The papaya leaves I used against the drizzling skies
The areca nut palm-spathes we pulled along as chariots
The fragrance of the fresh ginger growing under the banana trees
The flavour of the juicy Willard mangoes running between the fingers
The aroma of the jackfruit pulp that pervades the entire street
Alas! How great is my loss!

My beloved village
I was not tired of you
I did not move away.
When the time for harvesting comes
This crazy state will change
The time will come when you will again
Weave the cloth that’s mine by right.

There is nothing more to be said
For, my footwear I’ve left behind,
There, to stay
For eternity!

Read our full feature on Artist Protection Fund recipient Sharmila Seyyid ➔

MADISON SUMMERVILLE

The Duality of Homes

The first time I ever ate dinner at his house was an experience I will not soon forget.

His mother, sole patron of the kitchen, sweats over a pot of sauce. Spices make their way through the air, seemingly guided by an unnatural force. They were made for this purpose, and this purpose only. The sauce simmers while she takes her handmade knives and goes to work on the meat. The knives cost a pretty penny and were made from the finest steel in northern Alaska. Their edges slice through the pork easily as her expert touch coerces slices to separate from the chunk of meat they originated on. No music plays in the kitchen, but her movements are like a dance. A stir here, a new ingredient there, and in my mind, she pliés to the sound of a symphony only heard by me. I do not know much of ballet, but watching her cook has been an experience. She is the prima ballerina, and as she finishes her set (and dinner), she takes a bow after setting the table. I sit at the table next to him. I feel as if I should applaud the show, but he urges me not to. This is a regular occurrence in his house. In fact, this is a daily occurrence in his house. With the growling of my stomach imploring me to take the first bite, I dig in with my fork. As soon as the food touches my tongue, I cringe. The masterfully prepared dish was lost to me forever, and replaced with the taste, smell, and repulsion that can only come from a chef using too much salt.

Dinnertime at my house was an experience I try to forget.

My mother, after working ten hours at the hospital, groans as she makes her way to the kitchen, throwing on an '80s rock ballad. I watch in on her, careful not to enter, because the kitchen can only occupy one chef at a time, as per my mother’s rules. She would tell me time and time again that too many cooks would lead to her getting overwhelmed. In the kitchen now, rock music blaring, she scrounges frozen meats and processed mashed potatoes, exclaiming to the house that we would be eating casserole tonight. The house itself seemed to rumble with the displeased moans of my siblings and father, all located in different rooms. My mother throws the casserole in the oven after adding expiring ingredients and vegetables to the beat of raucous drums playing in the background. When the casserole finishes cooking, we all grab plates and serve ourselves. Sitting in the living room with the television playing a crude adult animated series, we eat. We never eat at the table unless it’s a holiday. The rock concert, often loud and unintelligible, is a weekly occurrence in my house. On nights when the concert isn’t present, we order food. The casserole that night in particular was delicious. To this day, I don’t know what made that casserole different than the hundreds of rancid ones we had been forced to eat in the years before.

I enjoy both homes. The chaos of one makes me crave the safety of the other, but when it comes down to it, my home will always be where I grew up, and I will always return whether the casserole is good or not.

In her free time, Madison Summerville loves to write horror and hopes to write her own horror novel someday.

ANNA IDELEVICH

Horizon Saber

The saber is melting in spite of January with raindrops over the grass.
A solid horizon hung like a fish, driving me crazy.
Cold in December, dry up, but flared up with the fire of love,
dancing bud catches the rain and knows that there is no death.
It melts with moisture on the tongue and the gums are his bed.
Probably there is no beach, probably there is only one blizzard in my head. Probably it’s time for me to sleep, but whispers that there is no death,
still sings the words again, wiping his nose first:
Everything you do, makes me crazy ’bout you.
Nothing that tenderness hangs, I’m only here until seven.
Everything you do, makes me crazy ‘bout you.
I am a molten sapphire, a souvenir not found.

Anna Idelevich: Anna’s poems were featured in Louisville Review, BlazeVOX, The Racket, New Contrast, Zoetic Press, and Shoreline of Infinity among others.

SHYLA SHEHAN

To Whom or What or Where

It’s been low tide
for a while, the beach
parched. Seagulls search
for salvation from starvation
and move on.

The sky is endless—
immeasurably clear.
I cast my questions out to sea
and marvel at the whole, lonely
Milky Way.

"To Whom or What or Where" was previously published in Local Honey | Midwest

JACK PHILLIPS

Two Poems

LUNA’S WOLF AT THE DOOR

It takes a couple of weeks to pass through the sun/moon door begins to open on the Solstice and full swung on the first full moon, Janus/Jana male/goddess Dianus/Diana Sun/Moon two-face deity of the past

and the future and the present belongs to Luna (as Diana also called) known to the First Nations as variously She-bear and Mama Wolf attended by juncos – full moon on belly new moon on back pinky-beak dipped in daybreak –

she rounds the year through a deciduous door opens to a meadow through which we too shall pass swing open our hearts full-mooned ripened/stripped laid naked to wrap

ourselves in coyote-light, the closest we come to a wolf or bear when the Moon-she comes six days into January.

SPILLOVER POEMS

Blue

As with all creatures the flow of my veins carries a measure of tears in the flat hand of night but in this light the daybreak wears the skin of my dreams and holds me, not without her own sadnesses but in this light she reveals a softer shade of blue, liquid orange spilling over and through me.

Weight

The moon in heat plays with mating foxes and when they call it a night she throws cinders mostly ashen juncos flinty titmouses pyrite chickadees and cardinal sparks, finches. Passions fall on this maiden dawn when gravity proves an earthly lust the lyric physics of desire, pinkish lingua on paper in ink, the weight of devotion on snow.

Shadow

Canopies draw skylines then veins then a web then sutras stitch the thin waters of my eyes and the rest of me. Write bird-songs in the snow a thumb for a crow a pinky a chickadee frog-song in mud come spring. Be known by these woods one flesh among many make shadows with the same sun lay lyrics on the land.

Curve

While we sleep the earth rounds herself round having spun a morning verses slip into view. We wake on the curve – night trails into birdsong belly to dawn, saucering wanderers tuck and curl, mustering sun rolls over edges as pulls the westering moon, souls take the shape of daybreak bent in the middle and a little on the ends.

Seep

In-breaking wildness or other sort of poetic rupture makes a lesion some seek to heal (keep the savage at bay) but this stomate makes real the passage of breath. In this spring-fed belly blood-bound bone of bones gristle and grist the animal gush of our being gurgles a sylvan seep to write a lune, a crescent-shaped suture to hold the wound open.

Swamp

Autumn bleeds into Solstice the way poetry soaks before the ripple but comes as wordless breath that vanishes on composing. Morning swamp-to saunter taking pause on recumbent ash soft awash in pondish laughter, bull-rushes murmur rose hips so tangy to the tongue, the first word.

Nuthatch

Even on this sharp dawn eleven days into the solar year a thousand eyes shine images creaturely windows into waking being. We can deny our true bodyselves but here in cold wildnesses not so, stirring earth into bluey-black comes orange her original skin and ours.

Mud

The daughters of Atlas escape Orion in chase and to the west the crescent cup fills with leaking daybreaks, at dawn spills claytonia fairy-spuds and fawn-lilies asters in the meadow moonseed by the creek, a galaxy on the belly of a toad, map of heaven in mud.