‘A Dream in Parts’ in Turnpike Magazine, September 2019

And I dream trees
The kind you rest on
green soothing peace
The kind you climb on
sun and shade, shadows born
like the words of your song

I dream flowers
of the tropics
busy petal clusters fragrancing
the body, a bracelet of jasmine
a necklace of frangipani
my very heart and ribs
as if frangipani, as if you

I dream skin
soft golden, you saying
I want to know
your skin, all of you within
My fingers feeling
the hollow at the base of your throat
and calling it home

I dream duvets
Bedside windows looking onto city streets
shapes curled in past sunrise post sunset
imprints in the down
our bodies our selves
wrapped in growing memories
as if fields of bluebells

and then I dream lights
the ones soft molten
clothing skin golden
The ones shining bright
covered eyes, bared souls
the ones winking in your eyes
glowing warm bed-laden sighs
while outside a city shimmers
kisses on the waters.

Turnpike Magazine, Issue no. 7: September 2019

Five poems in The Punch magazine, August 2019

Read Sadness is a boomerang and four other poems in The Punch magazine.

Sadness is a boomerang

they say write about happiness
of faraway lands where the flowers are red and fragrant
of peacocks and poems and picture books and forests verdant

the song inside is of sadness
of something beautiful, breaking in a flash
of slowly bleeding, oozing weeping sores years after
of my lover leaving me mid-kiss on a sunlit evening in Venice city of water

sadness is memory that comes back to bite
in the waves that come and go
my love, have you seen shoals of sprat leaping, falling
as we watch, dying on our feet, the water trickling from under our toes?

sadness is voiceless, eyes morose dead, vacant in its many faces

I try to laugh sometimes, I laugh so hard, my mouth turns inwards, loses shape
l paint a smile on and watch poppy fields turned blue
the abyss inside mirrors the one outside in a desolate seascape
from deep down the sadness in me, in my blood, skin and bones
column-like reaches the skies and boomerang-like pirouettes

Read the other four poems in The Punch magazine.

Three poems translated into Chinese and published in The World Poets Quarterly February Volume 93, Feb 2019

A certain way (and other two poems)

As an immigrant,
I am expected to behave in a way
a certain way.

Colour the walls with turmeric,
fill my soul with lament
for the land whose shores I have left
to become richer economically
poorer emotionally.
Fold oil into long black hair,
dream the stars of the eastern skies,
in this land, the land I call my own,
but never to be my own.
Wrapped in sarees, sapphire blue, sindoor red,
meant to be nostalgic about the
monsoon spray dazzling my eyes
calming my burning skin.

Instead, my mind
soothed by the nourishing cool green
of the land I live in,
energised by the glowing orange sun
of the land I come from,
decorates ice cubes with spice.

With silver anklets, red stilettoes,
the shortest, blackest dress,
I sip prosecco, spear olives expertly,
pile plates with rice and chicken curry
while in the garden
lavender, jasmine, clematis, and marigold,
spread their roots, dance their petals
into the pale grey wet skies
and the searing sunshine.

Uproot, grow, take root
parallel truths, a little of this,
a little of that.
For an immigrant,
there is no certain way to be.

 

In Chinese:

特定的方式（外二首）

作为一个移民人
我希望举止得体
用些特定的方式

用姜黄涂染皮囊
用哀歌填满灵魂
为了离别的大陆
在经济上更富裕
情感却更加贫瘠
发油抹进黑发里
想着东方的星空
在这片谓之大地
虽然并非我所有
裹挟着宝石蓝红
这也就是乡愁吧
印度洋的季风啊

令我眼花缭乱啊
抚平灼热的皮肤

我的心恰恰相反
需要绿色的滋养
在居住的大陆上
被橙色太阳照亮
我所来自的土地
用香料点缀冰块

银脚镯红高跟鞋
着超短超青衣裳
嘬一口普洛赛克
饮食鲜嫩的橄榄
盘盘咖喱鸡肉饭
花园里的薰衣草
茉莉女萎万寿菊
枝蔓交错舞蹈着
向着灰潮的天空
向着灼热的阳光

拔节生长也生根
一样的真理一样
一点一点都一样
对于移民们来说
没有特定的方式

Poetry in Visual Verse

SCREAM THROUGH NATURE

No orange skies
No blood-red clouds
No sun screaming through haystacks

I wake I wake
I ask why
I work I work
I ask why
I walk I walk
I ask why

for this scream through nature, in my head, in my bones, in my blood, caving in, exploding out, within the veins and the arteries and asking me why, especially when it’s morning, when that sun rises every day, expected to rise every day, and with that, I do too, to have the same, do the same and walk out where I have been to before, every day, and I think I mustn’t, I shouldn’t, for surely there is a sky above, grass to run on, there is somewhere to escape, walk out and you will be free, open the doors and there you are free, yet free to do what, free for what and whom, and then there is nothing, and while the thoughts and I try and the screams stop and there I am walking out again, the same path the same way the yesterday and today and tomorrow joining hands together in some macabre dance and I do the same as yesterday, and over and over and over again
and again

Read poem at Visual Verse.

Poetry on the walls of the library of the English faculty in University of Cambridge

Nostalgic Rain

An almost tropical rain arrives
I watch from the window.
Quiet roads, quieter cars.
The almost tropical rain
adorns the hanging planters.
Colourful flowers, petunias, azaleas, fuchsias
but fragrance less,
so the rain awakens nothing, hidden.
There’s even a hint of hailstones in today’s rain.

But, to be truly tropical you
need to emerge from the hunger of heat
the acridity of drought.
You need to rise deep from ponds brimming with lotuses
form clouds that spray down at will, lustily.
An almost tropical thunder today.

But to be truly tropical you
need to have been conceived in despair
spawned in hunger.
You need to have it in your belly.

The rain beats down today
my silence
it is not the same.

Two Poems. The Skin of Tradition

The Skin of Tradition

1

The foreigner watches a wedding in fascination
large bindi squatting on her forehead
red saree colouring white limbs.
The elders enthuse at how she
sits relaxed on the dusty ground
reveres the sacredness of every chant
embraces chaos in wondrous happiness.

The Americans, Germans, English,
French, Italians flock here, hearts one
with conch shells; cross-legged,
slurp white rice and dal from banana leaves.
Yet I, I ask for my fork and spoon.
Yet I, born in a small town, tempered by heat,
coloured with tradition, married saree-clad
in front of the fire, complain of the fumes,
my eyes burning. I, brought up within these walls
make it a point to question too much:
Why should I, why must I, bow in respect,
hide in shame, follow rules and customs,
forget myself? I question for years.

Later, in London, that city I call home,
forgetting that at home tulsi plants sit in courtyards
white chita is drawn on Thursday
to welcome Lakshmi.
‘A city without temples scratching its skyline
cannot be home, ever,’ they pronounce.
I question for years.

2

The answer, thought but not mouthed:
You can appreciate culture
fold your legs in supplication
bend your head, fast all day in a temple
knowing tomorrow you will be home.
Today is a thrill, like climbing Machu Picchu
like rowing down the Okavango Delta.
When the blood that runs in you today
bled on a pyre hundreds of years ago
soaking chrysanthemum garlands;
when, had you lived in a village
fifty years ago, you would be
behind a veil waiting, watching;
when not that many years back, a marriage
marked you with blood red sindoor in black hair
closeted rooms, opened legs
breeding healthy sons
if not white widows.

Since you know all this, the legs don’t fold here
in the dust, in the sacredness
even though they do at yoga in the gym.

The heart that belongs, never accepting, runs,
runs the farthest,
to shed centuries of old skin.

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