Weekly Edition #9
I was born a foreigner.
I carried on from there
to become a foreigner everywhere
I went, even in the place
planted with my relatives,
six-foot tubers sprouting roots,
their fingers and faces pushing up
new shoots of maize and sugar cane.
All kinds of places and groups
of people who have an admirable
history would, almost certainly,
distance themselves from me.
I don’t fit,
like a clumsily translated poem;
like food cooked in milk of coconut
where you expected ghee or cream,
the unexpected aftertaste
of cardamom or neem.
There’s always a point that where
the language flips
into an unfamiliar taste;
where words tumble over
a cunning tripwire on the tongue;
were the frame slips,
the reception of an image
not quite tuned, ghost-outlined,
that signals, in their midst,
an alien.
And so I scratch, scratch
through the night, at this
growing scab on black and white.
Everyone has the right
to infiltrate a piece of paper.
A page doesn’t fight back.
And, who knows, these lines
may scratch their way
into your head –
through all the chatter of community,
family, clattering spoons,
children being fed –
immigrate into your bed,
squat in your home,
and in a corner, eat your bread,
until, one day, you meet
the stranger sliding down your street,
realise you know the face
simplified to bone,
look into its outcast eyes
and recognise it as your own.
Art by Ben Bauchau
Other poems I enjoyed reading this week:
"Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again." -Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara
"For weeks
the only lesson I’ve learned
is that the leaves of the apple
are finally turning. Everything
has let go. There are days now
that go by without a sound.
I could be anyone.
Once I was a person
who loved you." -Cafe Solo by Lorna Dee Cervantes
"I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?"
-August Morning by Albert Garcia
"and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder -I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Recommended Listening:
Half Full Glass Of Wine - Tame Impala
Podcast: This is Love (Send me your stories, I'd love to do this in India)
Audm (long-form journalism, read aloud)
Links of the Week:
This is you here + this feature about the photo series How to Turn Empathy into Your Secret Strength
Preschool Poets: Animated shorts based on poems by 4/5-year-olds How Aretha Franklin Turned Otis Redding’s “Respect” Into a Civil Rights and Feminist Anthem 25 Alice Munro short stories you can read online Mirrored Installations by Sarah Meyohas Create Infinite Tunnels Strewn With Dangling Flowers
"There’s a need for an art form that allows someone to stand inside of it, that lets people lean in and see into a person’s life without having to commodify suffering or personal pain for someone else’s pleasure."
-Trust Poetry: an interview with Ada Limón
And of course, some Poorly Drawn Lines to fall asleep to. Night.
