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When the World Hardens, Go Where Beauty Still Lives
At the VU Women@VU International Women’s Day gathering this year, I found myself thinking about absence. Not only who is present in the room, but who goes missing from our frameworks. Whose names fall away. Whose lives remain insufficiently held by the language, institutions, and categories meant to account for them. During the event, Ismintha…
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My Ghazals are Broken: Wabi Sabi
On completing two years with this PhD! Faith bobs in disco lights, delicious Turkish drivers in Uber rides Veiled morning on the Rajpath bride, but what of fat-bikers’ prides By Amstel’s banks I park my shamiana outside,Days spent garam masala-ing PowerPoint slides Arre Wah! See Rembrandt’s light draping Shergill’s sideWhat of the partition, and the…
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An Ode to the Stylish Cafes of Copenhagen
The aroma of coffee fills the air,As I sit in this cozy little square. A cafe is more than just a place to sit,It’s a haven for the creative, the dreamers, the misfits. Wherever life takes us, wherever we roam,A cafe will always feel like an adopted home.
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What to make of this summer?
The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL Fredonia, NY Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruitso red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season. Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs of mint to slip in blue glasses of…
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My Transcendental Truth
Having recently given a guest lecture in Dr. Laura Rupp’s class on Translanguaging and Transnationalism, my mind kept going back to this old poem I had written: To tell you the truth Upon walking into an airport My body somehow becomes a machine Mechanical with nuts and bolts A system I cyclically follow My head…
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They hand you a box
They hand you a boxFour neat lines joined at supremely perfect right anglesYour body, rounded at the edges, pliable, more flesh than muscleSqueezing yourself into shape you triumph, look you say, I fitSkin compacted into nothingnessCells harnessed to behave One day, unexpectedly you spill outOver the edges, across the linesMass dictating it’s ruleslook they say,…
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When a poem is written like a telegram addressing a painting…
I am putting it on my agenda to feed the mind everyday with things of beauty, insightful words, and objects that inspire thought. It is an informal resolution for 2020, which so far has gone reasonably well. Recently, I read Sharon Olds’ Poem in the Form of a Telegram to Someone Looking at Henri Rousseau’s…
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I Shall Emerge!
Kawahigashi Hekigoto (1873-1937), Japanese poet and haiku pioneer writes: 初雷や ふるふが如き 雛の壇 Hatsu-rai ya/ Furuu ga gotoki/ Hina no dan The first thunder Is likely to shake The tiered doll stand. I feel that way about spring. As the heads of the first crocuses crown on my street I want to let out a guttural shriek, a…
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What about the letters?
Aneri Pattani writes, “Can teaching mindfulness through smartphones cure America’s loneliness problem?” The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved 153 adults practicing 20-minute guided meditations on their phone each day for two weeks. By the end of the study, those whose meditations focused on developing acceptance and awareness…
