Vacating an Apartment by Agha Shahid Ali
1
Efficient as Fate,
each eye a storm trooper,
the cleaners wipe my smile
with Comet fingers
and tear the plaster
off my suicide note.
They learn everything
from the walls’ eloquent tongues.
Now, quick as genocide,
they powder my ghost for a cinnamon jar.
They burn my posters
(India and Heaven in flames),
whitewash my voicestains,
make everything new,
clean as Death.
2
When the landlord brings new tenants,
even Memory is a stranger.
The woman, her womb solid with the future,
instructs her husband’s eyes
to clutch insurance policies.
They ignore my love affair with the furniture,
the corner table that memorized
my crossed-out lines.
Oh, she’s beautiful,
a hard-nippled Madonna.
The landlord gives them my autopsy;
they sign the lease.
The room is beating with bottled infants,
and I’ve stopped beating.
I’m moving out holding tombstones in my hands. Art by Henni Alftan
Recommended listening: Alright - Supergrass
Links of the Day: Video: Rock Band (The rock band is composed of electromechanical instruments that make music with rocks by throwing them through the air, slapping them and making them vibrate.) People I Saw But Never Met: Miniature Metal Figurines by Zadok Ben-David ‘I like the process of writing poetry to be play rather than work’: Arundhathi Subramaniam