Weekly Edition #103
Photo by Irving Penn
This Poem is a Riot by Krishnakumar Sankaran
You will not see it coming. This Is what you must do. Hide your kids.
Lock your locks. Bar your doors. Cock your guns.
Unhood your hoodies. Learn not to scream
When someone taps you on your back. Learn not to flinch
When glass shatters. Learn not to turn
For cries of help. Keep your CCTVS
Where all can see them.
When it comes
Shambling, throw jobs at it. Burn
Your notes in its face. Send your women
Out, breasts bared, tongues in heat. Roll
Your eyes at rolling cameras. Call it beast
When it swings its smoke bombs back at you.
Call it criminal when it cracks your lathis
On your skull. When it reaches out with flaying arms
Leveling cities, call it brother.
Read the other poems by Sridala Swami, Partho Chakrabartty, Robin Ngangom and Nicholas Y B Young as part of last week's collaboration with Nether here.
Other poems I read this week:
"The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful—
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.
-Monotone by Carl Sandburg
healing
is cleaning the blood-stains
after a grotesque war,
where you have lost
everything.
it is seeing your own guts
on an operation table
and being the doctor,
who operates to
sew it back.
-from Healing by Abinash Dash Choudhury
"Every day the earth grows a little bit warmer.
I think the ice caps must be recolonizing
in my gut because every day I shiver
a little bit harder. Soon it will become
a shudder. I already shudder out of sleep.
In my dreams, everything is always cold.
The dead lie perfectly preserved
on Everest and the rest of us decay, breath
by breath." -from Emergency Room Tableau by Mickee Cheung
Recommended Listening:
The Other Side of Paradise - Glass Animals
Good Morning Starshine - Oliver
Day One - Rae Morris
Lead the Way · Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
Slow Motion Orchestra: Harp (and watching)
Links of the Week:
Pet Portraits by Maanvi Kapur
Window Swap
Hubble Snaps Incredible Photo of a Faraway Galaxy
How artists capture environments | Modern Art & Ideas
The Lost Art of True Rest
Announcement: This Is My Newsletter
Presenting...This Is My Newsletter, a weekly newsletter with a surprise guest curator every Sunday.
The idea is to take a walk into a stranger's life during this lockdown, to give them a digital space to talk about anything and everything that matters to them. Sending out The Alipore Post for 5+ years has given me a lot of perspective on creativity and who I am, and kept me inspired enough to grow this community.
How it works: I'll be inviting people who inspire me to experiment with the newsletter format and share their world with us. For the subscribers, there's something to look forward to in their inbox every Sunday! :)
Subscribe if you're curious: http://tinyletter.com/thisismynewsletter
The first newsletter goes out on August 2nd. Spread the word!
-Rohini