jazz in Japanese

I recently discovered
jazz in Japanese
the notes are warm and familiar 
the words- a wild, foreign tease,
but like clockwork, the heart sends word
imagination is put to work
and note for note the syllables
become a rhythmic flow of possibles.

Like clockwork, the heart sends word
imagination is put to work
slowly in frail fashion, there gather
moving memories of life together.
Broken hands, hold out please 
for love like jazz in Japanese.

Pathian zarah

Sea of saffron god,
loud chants, parades
and even louder hammers
fill a country to the brim
(not my god, not my god)
My fluttered heart will call
for faith in its own language—
I will resist tongue first,
the rest of me will follow.
     When you ask
if I would say, ‘Inshallah’
you are asking me
who I am— I am not you,
nor your theocracy.
Not you, with your other
-ing gaze. Not you, who
make yourself the centre
so I will be, your periphery.
(I will resist, I will resist)
     My resistance is a
seed traveling down the
chicken’s neck, it will break
all boundaries you create.
someday it will be you
who say, ‘Pathian Zarah’
today, I will answer you and
say, ‘Inshallah Inshallah’.

*Pathian Zarah- in Mizo means Godwilling/ By God’s grace

This was written with a dear friend, Jerry Pyrtuh. The poem is ours.

Ka Ni,  is there a place for me
does it feel better
or does feeling stop
Should I return to water
and is the darkness kinder 
than all this light that 
forces me to see

Everyday I fight to 
continue this act
of resistance
they call living
today, I have to fight
just a little harder.

reflection

I wish I were simple
Simpler
I wish I were simply
This or that
Here or there
Now or then.

And then
I would be
Neat and categorisable
And others would understand
And I would understand
Me- this, here, now
Or
That, there, then

But I transgress
Spilling this and that
Here and there
Now and then
And at my wits end of how
To contain the spilling
different but of the same
again and again

Tonight, mizo vlogs in low volume
fill the room, as mummy eats her fruit.
“I wonder what my next thought will be”
a simple trick I learned to quiet the mind
doesn’t work for the heart,
and I am an ocean 
rivers of feeling empty into.

Like a mother whose child
reaches for the nanny
it is difficult to separate
sadness and gratitude 
as I press softly
a kiss atop her head.

“Forgive yourself, and let it go”

An abortion was advised by the doctors
because “this baby will either be stillborn
or have many defects”
And so I was born, of the stubborn will
of loving parents
I didn’t open my eyes for three days 
and everyone thought I was blind.
My older brother exclaimed, “she looks like a piglet”
And I did. I have photographs
and memories of every unkind word 
spoken to that little girl with thick glasses.
I was never conventionally feminine
nor pretty like other girls
I hated household chores, and loved
to climb trees 
And so I learned from an early age
how to hate myself appropriately 
to make up for my lack of societal propriety
became a movement
of fragmented shame
somewhere in that time
god lived in the secrecy of wet pillows.

Now in my thirties, with life as a teacher
(and I’m a painful learner)
I come to realise and slowly accept
that I am not wrong nor a mistake
not a burden on those I love
And though the
strangeness and wildness
of my geography cannot be mapped  
it is entirely mine, 
So I find myself where I began
at the magical margins
a heretic holy, a comfortable misfit
who, like my friend,
is learning that god is a stolen plum
and it is never too late
to write myself a love poem.

Why i hate bras

When I turned 13 I had my first trainers on
And my first remembered experience with shame
They felt, and still feel, horribly constrictive
But I came inelegantly into the age of bras, and into the age of breasts being game
I remember being open as I ran through 
a tunnel, 
and a soldier there who stopped 
me to ask who I was and as I parroted 
the name of my father, an officer in the army,
proceeded to put his hand on my trainers.
At this point my breasts  felt mature and important
Enough for me to know that, this wasn’t a boy grappling with me  for the ball
after a possible four was hit – me, trying to stop the ball, and he trying to stop me
That’s when I learnt, despite being surrounded by uniforms all my life
They don’t keep you safe 
Even if your father is an officer.
So I hate bras.
And the first thing we do
Once we feel safe
And you can ask any woman this,
Is to take them off.