When we kiss I taste
the sweet saltiness of the
ocean's lingering graze

When you laugh your eyes
glow like sunspots dancing
on the water’s calm surface

When you breathe in my ear
I hear the gentle roar of waves
And when I trace behind your ears
I feel the the soft underbelly of seashells

Late at night when cars sound like
Waves hitting a distant tidal line
You whisper "How can you love me
when I am like an ocean and you
have only glimpsed the shoreline?”

But I've stood in enough tides to know
The hypnotic pull of the unknown
And coughed up enough water
to know the pain of drowning but
there's something that keeps me
returning and yearning to swim
deeper into this ocean's expanse

The walls are made from mossy rough blankets,
buttressed by lumpy pillows.
The flashlight, stolen from the nurse's pocket,
casts yellow moonlight to help him survey the land.  

There's a lot growing in these woods
the roves of blood thirsty IV tubes,
the constant clatter from distant lands
piped through the TV from the next door over.

The prognosis is bad,
but he doesn't care
He's protected here,
in his cradled form,
still exploring even as
he takes his last breaths,
ready to conquer new lands.

In my home city of Dhaka, there is an abundance of bananas. Their sickly sweet aroma hangs heavy in the air, mixing with the stench of human toil and chemical wastes to produce the true odor of despair. The lives of these bananas are relatively short. They start off in a poor farmer’s tree, dragged to market in a broken-down truck, and sold at a cut-throat price to the vendor. In a well-rehearsed play, vendor and consumer haggle over bruised bananas. The tired consumer brings the bananas home and hangs them in the kitchen where cockroaches stalk empty cupboards.  
                      The next day, we, the children, will carry the bananas in empty lunch boxes to school. Together, we will sit through vapid lectures, tailored to make the clock tick slower. Not once will the teacher pause to encourage us to achieve. During lunch, we will devour our bananas with unwashed hands. Despite our best efforts, we will be corralled into our parents’ lives and become the next generation of factory workers and office clerks.  
              Sometimes though, a child manages to get a glimpse into the other world. I was fortunate enough to be one of these children. One afternoon, my father came into our tiny living room with a smile on his face and an object protruding from his shirt pocket. He told me that he had a special present for me. With a practiced flourish, he took out an orange from his worn shirt. My eyes widened with amazement.
              To me, oranges were objects only celebrities and corrupt politicians could afford. They were luxury items, myths seen on television. Yet here I was, nothing extraordinary, holding a real orange in my palm. Slowly I peeled the orange, feeling my old impoverished self peel away simultaneously. As I tasted the first tangy slice, I heard the shackles of the banana chain fall. It was then that I truly felt that I had the power to become anything I wanted. That day, I was liberated from the vicious banana cycle.
               From that day forward, I looked for positive events in my life, for signs of hope and change. One day, I saw my strict, condescending teacher discreetly hand an orange to a classmate whose family was unemployed. For the rest of the day, the child stood a little taller. For that day, he was no longer living in a destitute environment, but residing in the warmth of human nature.

Paper unfolded is by far
the most beautiful possibility
Before it is folded
Twisted, refolded, untwisted
Doubled, tripled, bent and unbent
To be beaten into a form
A claustrophobic form.

Wee black-eyed daughter Sakina was the first to notice it. The guava that had the hairs on it, prickly like a stray alleycat’s. We didn’t know what to do with it so we left it by Nana’s backyard swing next to the pond. When we came back the next day, the hairs had grown longer, this time like crooked peacock’s feathers slim, indolent Saleem’s father used for his broken down rickshaw. “Wow!” bushy eyed Hidra, “should we eat it?” Our piqued response thereafter was that Hidra should be excluded.

All throughout the monsoon season, we trekked back to Nana’s backyard, our hungry, empty Ramadan bellies growling in loud protest but we slathered on, bulwarks against chaos. Each day, the guava became more human, on Monday the smallest hint of tooth, by Tuesday three limbs, and after Jummah prayers on Friday a whole mouth! We poked it, bruised it, no regard for ****** integrity, evince the monsters we hid underneath. It was a sensation that haunts us today. Demure Dafne was the first one to clothe it, placing a ragged sun-bonnet over the eyes. A soft smile emerged then, a genteel kindness. Imbued with flimsy protection, she slipped into the pond.

Yesterday we drove down past the
Thickest thickets in the garden state
Listening to whine of The Shins with
Our windows letting in the tiny bugs
Dotting the sky between twilight hours  

You had sticky chocolate hands and
Salt specks from unfinished french
Fries on your plaid shirt tucked into
Your khaki shorts secured with a firm
Brown belt around your small hips

In the rearview mirror I watched the
Sea shore tuck itself into the small
Sea town tuck itself into the green
Fields until darkness enveloped us
And we could not sing anymore

"Hope is a thing with feathers"
They read, confused.

The only feathers in life were
On TV or locked away in a zoo.

They read the poetry of Whitman
The dictates of Emerson
Of Ginsburg, Steinbeck, Salinger
Nothing made sense

When you spend your life being prodded
From concrete box to concrete box
Stuffed, squashed and barely managing to survive,
Imagination is rare

It's hard to picture feathers,
Red hunting caps, blooming lilacs,
Open roads
Between ***** pavements
Glittering broken bottles, and leftover plastic

Beauty became an expensive concept,
Best left for academics

Step out from your silver screen and your golden slippers.
Unwrap your red wedding sari that hangs heavy on your shoulders.
Loosen the blouse that strangles your *******.
Untie the skirt that suffocates your hips.
Throw away heavy golden earrings and necklace.
Wipe off the layers of kohl around your eyes.
Take off your clanging bangles.
Smash them in the ground and watch the colorful mosaic emerge under your bleeding feet.
Anoint yourself with this scarlet bindi.
Rub holud in the spaces you love and the spaces you don’t love yet. This is your holy ground.
This is where you will fight.
This is where you come alive.
Stand still and breathe.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, you are still alive yet.

I.
My mother places a dot of
Vermillion
On my forehead the same hands
That have helped
Bury a million
Unborn babies in the lush green
Fields that the brochures display

II.
The young bride enters her groom's house
Her alta colored feet leave red
Bloodstains in her wake
A young girl trails behind
places her little feet
in the same prints and
Waits

III.
The gotar mali has her arms tied above
Her head and her legs splayed blood
Drops from her body and the officials
Frame it in a green background and
call it a flag, call it a country, call it a
Dying woman's honor

IV.
My mother places a dot of
Vermillion
on my forehead
And I wonder if it's way of
branding
Women with an honor
they did not ask for
And cannot control

My mother she tells me
That color does not matter
That white just means that
they are lacking pigments,
science really.

When I come home crying
My mother she tells me
If they mock me,
it's only because they are jealous

When I sit alone at lunch
My mother she tells me
If they avoid me,
It's only because they are jealous

When I have no one to invite to my graduation
My mother she tells me
If they do not come,
It's only because they are jealous

What are they so jealous of?

Words can only be repeated so many times
before they lose meaning
And I'm afraid
That my mother's words
Ring hollow in my ears

i am a collection of pencil shavings
fickle and fragile with rough edges
that ***** your fingertips and drift

my small colorful piles gather
against the white bed sheets
that you carved into me and left

When I was thirteen my mother
Took a rose and crushed it
Letting the thorns ***** into her sides
Pinpoints of blood blushing on her arm

“This is what a man does to a woman,
What he takes and what cannot be
Restored, this what you must endure
This is what your family must endure
Because you are a woman.”

So is it any wonder that when you
Pushed yourself inside without asking
I did not stop you, that I only closed
My eyes and saw the image of that
Crushed red rose lying limp
Between my mother’s feet

“What did you have for breakfast?”
Cereal with milk, I think.
“Toast with Nutella,” I blurt out.
Just another innocuous lie
You believe it.
Why wouldn’t you

So
I begin alter reality
In small ways

Soon
I reconstruct my life

One day
I am Ford Prefect
No longer awkward, towel always present, the number 42
memorized

While on other days,
I am the smallest non-bonded hydrogen atom
Enjoying anonymity,
Hiding everywhere, being everything, finally fully
Present.

One day
I am caught
My yet-uncreated self
Snagged in thorny lies
By days I forgot
To distort

I cease to
exist

The smell lingered long after she had called the ambulance, after she had scrubbed the bathroom tiles back to a pristine white, after she had thrown out the ******* mangoes he had hid in the closet. For days afterward, she avoided the bathroom, showering the best she could in the old porcelain sink they had installed in the spring when he was able to keep fresh flowers in the kitchen vase. Those days, she would come home to jasmine and broken plates, marigolds and burnt biryani, pigeon wings and torn paper. Some days he was snake-quiet. Other days, his skin was fever hot, his limbs flailing to an alien language, his head tilting back, ululating.
Every day she would carry his soiled clothes into the laundry room, ignoring the thousands of whispered comments that trailed behind her. “Look how outgrown her eyebrows have become” as she strangled the hardened blood out of his blue longyi. “Look how her fingernails are yellow with grease,” as she beat the sweat out of his white wife beaters. “Look how curved her back is” as she hung his tattered briefs to dry in the small courtyard. The sultry wind picked up the comments as it breezed by her, carrying them down the road to the chai stand where they conversed until the wee hours.
Today, there is no wind. The coarse sun has left the mango tree in the back corner of the courtyard too dry, the leaves coiling inward. She picks up the green watering can filled with gasoline. The rusted mouth leaves spots on the worn parchment ground as she shuffles over. Her chapped sandals leave no impression. The trunk still has their initials, his loping R and V balancing her mechanical S and T. They had done it with a sharp Swiss Army knife, its blade sinking into the soft wooded flesh. “Let’s do it together,” he urged, his large hand dwarfing hers. A cheap glass bangle, pressed too hard against her bony wrist, shattered.  
Now, her arthritic finger traces the letters slowly, falling into grooves and furrows as predictable as they were not. When had they bought it? Was it when he had received the big promotion, the big firing or the big diagnosis? Or was it farther back, when he had received the little diploma, the little child or the little death? There was no in-between for him, everything was either big or little. Was it an apology tree or an appeasement tree? Did it matter? The tree was dying.
Her ring gets stuck in the top part of the T. He had been so careful when he proposed. Timing was sunset. Dinner was hot rice, cold milk and smashed mangos, her favorite. Setting was a lakeside gazebo surrounded by fragrant papaya trees. She had said yes because the blue on her sari matched the blue of the lake. She had said yes because his hands trembled just right. She had said yes because she had always indulged in his self-indulgences. She slips her finger out, leaving the gold as an offering to the small tree that never grew.    
She pours gasoline over the tree, rechristening it. Light the math, throw the match, step back, mechanical steps. She shuffles back through the courtyard as the heat from the tree greets the heat from the sun. She doesn’t look back. Instead, she is going up one step at a time on the red staircase, through the blue hallway, to the daal-yellow door. These were the colors he said would be on the cover of his bestseller as he hunched over the typewriter for days on end. Those were the days he had subsisted only on chai and biscuits, reducing his frame to an emaciated exclamation mark. His words were sharp pieces of broken glass leaving white scars all over her body.  
She remembers his voice, the deep boom narrating fairytales. Once upon a time, she had taken a rickshaw for four hours to a bakery to get a special cake for his birthday. Once upon a time, she had skipped sitting in on her final exams for him. Once upon a time, she had danced in the middle of an empty road at three in the morning for him. Once upon a time, she had been a character in a madman’s tale.
Inside, she takes off the sandals, leaving them in the dark corner under the jackets they had brought for a trip to Europe, never taken. Across the red tiled floor, she tiptoes silently, out of habit. From the empty pantry, she scrounges up the last tea leaf. Put water in the black kettle, put the kettle on the stove, put tea leaf in water, wait. On the opposite wall, her Indian Institute of Technology degree hangs under years of dust and misuse.
Cup of bitter tea in hand, she sits on the woven chair, elbows hanging off the sides, back straight. Moments she had shot now hang around her as trophy heads on cheap plastic frames. A picture of them on their wedding day, her eyes kohl-lined and his arm wrapped around her. A picture of them in Kashmir, her eyes full of bags and his arm limp. A picture of them last year, her eyes bespectacled and his arm wrapped around an IV pole. The last picture at her feet, her eyes closed and his arm is burning in the funeral pyre. No one had wanted to take that picture.      
A half hour later, a phone call from her daughter abroad. Another hour, a shower in the porcelain sink. Another hour, dinner, rice and beans over the stove. Another hour and the sun creeps away for good. It leaves her momentarily off guard, like when she had walked home to find him head cracked on the bathroom tub. The medics had assured her it was just a fall. Finding her bearings, she walks down the dark corridor to their, no, her bedroom.
She sits down now on the hard mattress, low to the ground, as he wanted it to be. She takes off her sari, a yellow pattern he liked. She takes off her necklace, a series of jade stones he thought was sophisticated. She takes off the earrings he had gotten her for her fortieth, still too heavy for her ears. She places her hands over eyes, closing them like she had closed his when she had found him sleeping in the tub, before she had smashed his head against the bathtub.  
In her dreams, she walks in a mango orchard. She picks one, only to find its skin is puckered and bruised. She bites it only to taste bitterness. She pours the gallon of gasoline on the ground. She sets the orchard on fire and smiles.

Cockroaches peering between the shattered plates scattered once they heard the slap of Shanta’s footsteps up the narrow halls. 5’4 in white socks and brown sandals, she commands the room, her yellow sari, a beacon in the darkening winter days. Mrs Tagore’s radio leaks through paper-thin walls.

Pagla hawar badol diney/ Pagol amar mon jegey othey

Out the **** elevator, she glides above dull linoleum floors to her two room cardboard box. Salina’s neon pink birthday banner hangs on, cobwebs burrowed between ‘A’ and ‘L’. She put the meager groceries away, and hung the bag out the window next to of her neighbor’s drying *******, cold air a mercy from the heat of the stove. Next door, the radio blares on.

Chena shonar kon bairey; Jekhaney poth nai nai re, Shekhaney okaroney jaai chhootey

Lamb’s breath sauteed with cumin, onions, garlic and green chillis from Aladdin’s Grocery on 14th and Jasper clings to her collar like an expensive perfume. The water hisses when it’s poured over, steam rising in protest. She traps under the lid, allowing a single stream to whistle her a lonely tune.

Ghorer mukhey, aar ki re? Kono din shey jabey phirey/ Jabey na jabey na, deyal joto shob gelo tootey.

Today is Salina’s birthday, her plastic table mat is still in its place on the three legged table propped against the living room wall. Shanta puts down a chipped white ceramic plate, cuts out a slice of angel birthday cake and lights a candle, a spell casting soft gold on the old crayon drawings on the plaster walls. She sits in a plastic chair and watches the door. The song reaches its crescendo.

Brishti nesha bhora shondha bela/Kon Boloraam-er ami chaela/ Amar shopno ghirey naachey maatal jutey, joto maatal jutey.

Each echo of stilettos makes Shanta hold her breath. Perhaps this year Salina will finally come back, perhaps this year the door will open and her daughter will smile, will hug her, will laugh as her mother cries. On the table, wilted jasmines, calling cards left unused, Salina’s poems cut from magazines, the word collage blurring together. “My mother's hands/calloused/call me/ bruised mango/this is love”. Each ticking of the clock another blow, another **** collecting on the plate.

Ja na chaayibar tai aaj chaayi go, Ja na paayibar tai kotha pai go? Pabo na pabo no

Mrs. Tagore’s song ends. The candle wax melts on the cake, the cake is thrown away, the room grows dark. Shanta collapses next to the stove. She undoes her yellow sari, loosens her blouse. When she strokes herself, when she comes, she bleeds, she is coming home.

It was the type of heat that
Where bodies hungered
filled in the other's hollows
tongue in mouth in ear
the crook of the neck.

The type of heat that
left hair tangled, matted
limp against the back
leaving slick imprints.

The type of heat that
sparked and radiated
that needs no language
for ******.

The type of heat that
Has no introduction
That ends only in
Exhalations

"Oh Tata you're crazy"
Almond shaped eyes pointing in
Two directions, hair still frizzy from
The static on your two toned wool
Sweater, your glasses askew hanging
Precipitously on the edge of your nose

"You're crazy" I saw again when
You'd show me notebooks filled
Earnest hasty lines naive to prove
Their worth to the world, stumbling
Figures eager to spread world peace

"You're crazy" I repeated as you
Gingerly combed the remaining strands
Of greying hair and tuck your collared
Shirt into your pressed khakis but left
ice cream splotches drying on your arms

Too late I realized that you weren't crazy
I was just too small to it was the world
That was crazy so strict with their lines and rules about who could and couldn't be
And you existed in between spaces yet undefined

You are the clapping monkey
You are the restless throb of dusty city streets
You are the children running around after the school bell
And the stubborn tree that has lived in the neighbourhood for fifty years

However, you are not clipped footsteps of harried workers
Or the diligent, clockwork-like ebb of traffic
And you are certainly not tranquil duck in the middle of the city park
There is just no way that you are the tranquil duck

It might interest you to know that
I am the neat, color-coded filing cabinet
I also happen to be worn-out recliner beckoning in the evening’s light
And the ever-winding, deserted country road

I also happen to be the free-floating paper bag
But don’t worry, you are still the clapping monkey
You will always be that clapping monkey
And I am the enchanted audience.

Pencil lapsed over paper, strokes struck blank.

Curves raced up and down the stairs, lines longed to curve.
Loops eloped to a wedding
Spirals sprung out,
Dashes dashed,
Crosses squares with circles
Triangles jumped over rectangles
Ovals wove throughout

Dot was left to point out
The empty blank around him

Taking two sloping steps at a time
I hurried toward the gray peak
As if propelled by some Pied Piper’s rhyme
Between the battering of the wave’s break
On the smooth gray stones
Laid out as some colossal creatures bones

Near the top there lay
An ancient castle of pride and age
Shining under a single sun’s ray
Copied out of a fairytale page
Around it, the grass waved
Like sports fans after some fantastic goal was saved.

Nestled against the castle’s topmost crook
A fiddler sat upright and played
His music notes traveled and shook
Through the crowded masquerade
Of tourist’s gasps, native rough accents
Dominating the soundsphere without any assistance

They waltzed around in the air
Only to be carried away by a vicious banshee wind
Leaving me momentarily bare
A noiseless kind of blind
As I stared out in the distance
Watching the cliff be beaten out of existence

We are the ones
who sit behind
clouds and mist
Fallen
Left
Trodden.

It's our skin, you explain,
it remembers every touch,
glance, action and dance

We are etched on
by our actions.

A tapestry of life
Illuminated on us.

Today, I was sitting on the SEPTA, on my way to work as usual.
Suddenly, a Secane Bro appeared. This wasn't just any bro, it was a special breed, rare and only to be found at the Secane station between the hours of 7 am to 9 am and again from 4 pm to 6pm.

These are the Indian research bros.

They come in with gelled hair, starched shirts (ranging from pink, sorry, salmon, to white) and the indelible odor of Indian cooking and men's cologne.
For a more science-driven bro, a heavy backpack is essential, while the cooler bros have headphones and briefcases.

The bros are often self-conscious and gang together.
They rarely have a female companion, since such a thing is against the bro-code. They always sit together, or at least in the same car.

Most of all, the bros have hope.
They are ambitious,
flying fish in the dreary SEPTA morning atmosphere,
zealous believers willing to jump
through whatever loop and
hoop to get their own piece of the
American dream.

Dream on bros, dream on.

He drinks until he's throwing up,
When he's with the Taylor Gang

I read until my eyes are closed
When I'm at the library

A child did walk along the lake
On the other side
A monster did slowly wake

With claws that could rake
Blood and a hairy hide
A child walked along the lake

With soft hands that bake
Sugar cookies and intent bona fide
A monster did slowly wake

Repulsive cries that snake
Into dreams nationwide
A child did walk along the lake

Remarkable songs that make
Magic become applied
A monster did slowly wake

Joining together at sanity’s sake
Switching at the continental divide
A child did walk along the lake
A monster did slowly wake

Hey, how was your day?
(do you still hate me?)

It was okay.
(yes I am still mad)

Anything interesting?
(what can I do to get you to forgive me?)

Nope.
(Not  a single thing.)

Words not said:
I love you,
I can't be mad at you,
I'm sorry.

My mother wanders into the fancy party,
A bull in the china shop,

Her eyes are saucers as she watches
Waiters enslaved to the night

Unidentified identities lie behind masks
She's afraid


Not unsmart she repeats
Not uncultured
Not uncivilized

Not un (is) not un (is) not un (is)
A meter, a harmony, a rhyme
Meaning inherent

He did it out of a swamping sense
Of obligation

He did it because if no one else
Was going to do it.

He did it because he had been
Doing it.

Sometimes that was just
enough to keep
going.

Sometimes he wondered
If others thought why.

If they too got lost
looking for an answer that
Felt did not exist.

Truth?
He did it because
He was scared
to stop.