FICTION & POETRY
Six Poems
"In Ayodhya’s sacked Mogul masjid / vultures scrawl Ram on new temple bricks. / Brother, from this mandir of burning"
VOL. 1
POETRY
Rajiv Mohabir
Artwork by Kareen Adam for SAAG. Monoprinted, digitally-animated collage, ink on paper (2020).
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Artwork by Kareen Adam for SAAG. Monoprinted, digitally-animated collage, ink on paper (2020).
Poetry
Guyana
31st
Oct
2020
Poetry
Guyana
Indo-Caribbean
Bondage
Colonialism
Mahadai Das
Babri Masjid
Ayodhya
Historicity
Georgetown
Pandemic
Creole
Guyanese-Hindi
Ram Temple
Oceans as Historical Sites
Personal History
Antiman
The Taxidermist's Cut
The Cowherd's Son
Cutlish
Histories of Migrations
Code-Mixing
Multilingual Poetry
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of The Cowherd’s Son, The Taxidermist’s Cut, Cutlish, Antiman, and the translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara from Awadhi-Bhojpuri. He has received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets, been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Nonfiction, and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, amongst many other awards. He is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
KAREEN ADAM is a Maldivian-Australian visual artist sharing her time between Maldives and Melbourne, Australia. The experience of living between multiple cultures, particularly negotiating between the East and the West informs her practice. Ideas about transitions, cultural identity, and the juncture between 'local' and the 'visitor' emerge in her work. Her current projects explore representations of island tourist destinations and island diaspora. Kareen explores these ideas using various mediums including printmaking, drawing, painting and digital multi-media. Kareen is the creator and maker “Kudaingili”—a range of hand-made, hand-printed products. Kareen has curated exhibitions, and exhibited her art works in Maldives, Brisbane, Melbourne, Hong Kong, and the Asia Pacific region. She has a Diploma in Visual Arts from the Southbank Institute of Technology, Brisbane and a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology from the Queensland University of Technology.
Ghee Persad
I.
You know straight away it’s ghee
and not oil but you can’t eat it
without gambling for the price
of home-feelings, you may soon lose
a toe, then a foot, then your leg.
Call it faith—like drinking Ganga water?
Call it an offering, like this sweet,
that stood at the bronze feet of the ten-
weaponed, tiger-riding Devi. You’ve
recounted the tale of how she slew
the demon-headed asura who made
a compact with the gods so strong
they trembled in heaven, how
sugar is also divine and terrible.
II.
First hot the karahi with ghee and paache de flouah till ‘e brown-brown den add de sugah and slow slow pour de milk zat ‘e na must get lumpy.
Like you mek fe you sista fust picknki ke nine-day, how you tuhn and tuhn ‘am in de pot hard-hard you han’ been pain you fe days, but now you see how ovah-jai you sistah face been deh. You live fe dis kine sweetness.
You eat one lil lil piece an’ know dis a de real t’ing.
Like when a-you been small an’ you home been bright wid bhajans play steady, how de paper bag wha’ been get de persad became clear from de ghee you been hable fe see you own face.
III.
You pass though
ever kind watah,
there is always new
life to celebrate.
Seawall At Morning
Georgetown, Guyana 2019
What starts at night
startles the dawn:
rain water replenishes the trench
lotus stalks and petals stand tall
Seawall signs painted Namasté in acrylic
Beyond, the sea silts brown as mud as
a frigate soars wings of stone.
And beyond:
a ship with sails from 1838
I look twice—
an oil rig? Another form
of bondage?
Pandemic Love Poem
One by one
the yellow jackets
leave their nest,
a hole covered
with decaying leaves
that warm the ground
and an inert queen
they’ve fed
all autumn. What sleeps
inside will one
day burst into
a wind of wings.
What will wake
a sleeping queen?
Beneath my waist
growing larger,
the sting of nights one
by one, when
I am stranger and
stranger to you.
We sleep in a converted
porch, wooden siding,
the wall that insulates
what’s inside it
which is not you,
nor is it me.
The bedclothes stiffen
with cold. Remember
me? One by
one peel the yellow
sheets from our nest. Prick me
with your heat
from sleep. Place
a cardamom pod
under my tongue.
Come, dissolve
with me.
Sita ke Jhumar
स्टाब्ब्रुक के बाजार में अंगूठिया गिरी गयल रे।
स्टाब्ब्रुक के बाजार में अंगूठिया गिरी गयल रे।
हमसे खिसियाई बाकी हमार गलतिया नाहीं ।
सास करइला चोखा खावे, ससुर दारू पिये।
ससुराल में परदेसिया रोटी थपथपे अउर दाल चउंके।
आमवा लाये भेजल हमके जीरा लाये भेजल हमके।
बाकरा ठगल हमके संगे जाने ना माँगे है।