Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Raena Shirali
Jodhpur, Jharkhand, Philadelphia
– after Cathy Linh Che’s “Los Angeles, Manila, Da Nãng”
The air is writ of ash and sand, though this is no memorial.
Camels buckle clumsily groundward & I’ve forgotten
how to grieve. I was nowhere when my grandparents
died, just like I’m nowhere
now, picturing Jain temples & carved
elephants & the faces
of so many monkeys huddled
on eaves. I wish all women on earth
a day of invisible. I wish for no
trials, no catcalls, no sound. Like how I am
on this dune— transparent, wondering
about power & numbers. Bodies
of accused daayani
go unreported while I roast dough over dull
heat. This in the country Empire left
behind. Here,
the flour-silted air. Here, the warm, dry scent
of pyre. I’m moving now through paved
streets—all old film, detergent—kept aloft
by gusts from subway grates, wondering
how the river smells when women
are dragged into it, the Pink City turning
blue at dusk, sandstone falling into music.
At a wedding in the West, my great aunt celebrates
her sister’s death—spirits, she sings,
are all around us. Good & evil & will
we lend an open ear. Here is my plea
on cue : country of drought
& several gods, country of waterfalls
wrung brown with soil’s unease, I’m not there
enough, not you enough
& I’ve come to ask what to do
with our dead. Rivermouth
& useless, reading up on reportage, I’m by
a stream or in
the desert or dragging my scent
through the unwashed city—what good
is brotherly love, what good
is Empire paving over
ground bones, I don’t know why
my story matters, I don’t
know why this story—
GOD OF NEW BEGINNINGS, I CELEBRATE YOU POORLY
no vendors or busted starfruit in my dreams
& i can’t tell my own shell from a tamarind’s. i know
not everyone is so lucky. not everyone’s a wingspan
of torn peacock feathers. it’s true i’m surviving
in the land of failed festivals, setting aside days
to pray & tricked into unwinding weeks
of fast & fast & give. i have offered what i can
& know : it’s not enough.
+
night did not fall with my heart in summer & i turned
toward smoke to feel less, spent my days discussing : is it possible
for a white partner to fully
see me. color : that spectrum : his eyes closed & groping
for what in the dark.
+
no violence in solitude : another self-induced mantra. i pace
the house followed by a cloud of mosquitoes.
i keep trying to reach you, sister. some would call that
endless searching love. you’re in the dark
or you are your own source of light & either way
it is dusk or not when you leave
home, lamp-light, shadow or glow
of yourself. if to be loved is to be seen,
to you i am holding out
my hand.
+
i repeat : we glow darkly.
my love turns from me, won’t
say why.
+
nights i am closest to you : in
sobriety, making lists of our similarities,
a framed recipe of all
the clichés. the edges of everything
suddenly sharpen, guitar strings seeming
long thin knives, leaves harassed by wind
while they’re just trying to vine themselves
to something stable. it’s september & i wish
of this mind an eraser, september
& feet carry the body—unwilling—
to the pharmacy counter, september when i ask
to stop forgetting even as i pray
to black out.
+
other nights are a burrowing : into sheets
so white they’re transparent, the quilting underneath
visible. this : a poor metaphor
for reading up on your village. you’re there
being seen but only barely & for naught : i’m tracing
stitching with a nail, waiting to feel cut.
+
night & i walk down the street in the shadow
of him, protected. yes : security is an illusion.
yes : i feel secure, arrive home sometimes
unscathed. & of that, am ashamed.
+
no women are allowed to be
suns. no unfurling gold
behind a raindark cloud. no daayan
a metaphor, no goddess
for the sick. no woman in no country
is not fielding some nonsense
she didn’t ask for. & without
my summoning, nonetheless, here
it is, invoked : the question
of asking. who gets to. who answers.
who is free—and where
—to speak.