By Afsar Mohammad
1
Out of her dream,
she walks gently
into this place giving it a name,
and framing its waters, dust,
spaces, hills and wild forests
either in a square or a circle- she seizes a droplet of
every bit of nature into her womb to it
a belly, hands, eyes, ears and feet.
.
Sooner or later, they deny her from head to toe —
2
One of these later days she looks in the mirror
and stares deep into her eyes to learn that nothing is similar
— everything differs so much from everything.
Out of her reality,
she walks into this space giving it
a name and framing its skies, stars, black holes, moons
and several suns either flat or in a triangle.
— she jumps into an emptiness
endless blankness and its dark, tiny holes —
3
Sooner or later, they all reject her every layer —
Out of her dream,
she sneaks out like a hole beautifully carved to fit several bodies
and mould their hands, feet, eyes, ears and tired privacies.
4
She never stops dreaming,
as she is made simply
to dream.
As such
she never
sleeps either.
*
Poem 2:
The Making
broken pillars speak out
as winds gush through their flattened arms
a thought hanging down from nowhere
.
now my time to stretch the arms
to reach up,
as the ruins keep tumbling
.
never seen this home
in its entirety;
for me, it’s an empty village
deserted a while ago;
a swarm of words limp around me
.
now it’s my time to straighten
the body
to sew it nerve to nerve.
*
Poem 3:
into her arms
1
Sun-drenched layers play
with each other as waters ripple and fly within their little skies
this afternoon
as you surprise me.
.
gleaming and spreading onto the edges of the bluish horizon, you stretch your wet feet towards me and pushing me into you
–you hurl me back into several ages
2
we play at our convenient ages, and with our comfy tenderness, and toggle between childhood and adulthood, pulling hard to settle somewhere in-between
a game that never ends, but just begins again every time under the same burning sun, floating boats, flowing bodies, women turning white to brownish
3
and then
little Christs yearn to walk on water.
*
Click here to access Afsar Mohammad’s interview
Afsar Mohammad teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, and he has published five volumes of poetry in Telugu. His English poetry collection is forthcoming. He has also published a monograph with the Oxford University Press titled, The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India. His current work, Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, has been published from Cambridge University Press. His poetry collection, Evening with a Sufi, was published by Red River.
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