Bharata
They say modernity and mean the West.
The time they refer to is really a place. And the place
is a myth of the map
where the West means everything to the left
of the East. They say the East and mean
sandy-haired marijuana samadhi with sitars,
or mind-body down-dog clean living in Seattle,
or oppressive social structures,
pick your decade. I was born to the right
of the left and to the left of the right, which is why
I am all over the map,
even though I’ve never lived anywhere other
than Ohio, surrounded by place names
belonging to extinct tribes. They, too,
were Indians. The West said Indians and meant
people to the West. Trust no name
your mother didn’t give you. Everybody knows
go far enough West and you end up
losing a day
because time is a myth
with a line on a map of the real world.
They say real world and mean
the world as they say it is. The world as I say it is
doesn’t have a place
on any map. The East is mired in its myths.
The East has no sense of history or past, no sense
of historical time, no modernity, no sense of its place
to the east of the West. Everything
the West did to it, therefore, did not happen
at any time
at any place. If I keep going left across
the International Date Line
I might get there. A New
World I’ll name India. The same
place, lost in time.
My people lost in the same place.
Kashmir Sequence
They used her to scrape a bare patch in the grass
nine nights straight
scorpion-stinger coccyx
raw white, like a skinned knuckle
infected, oozing
into the gutter they dug in the place
between her
the pus was viscous, white
it kept coming
she woke up
wet
I don’t want us to visualize this
our eyes are ball bearings anyway
steel spheres glistening by screen light
I want us to smell this
what name do I have to give her
for you to smell this
I can make her Rukhsana, I can make her Rakhee
Anuradha or Anjum
nine nights of Shivaratri
or nine nights of Ramzaan
a child or a child
feasted on
take your pick, you men of conviction
with your thoughts about Kashmir
protective brothers
honorable fathers
sons of the mother
land you left
dripping
one God
or Three: create her, sustain her, destroy her
five pillars of faith
seven times around the marriage fire
nine lives
for the cat, the pussy cat
lapping up the white
pus
the spilled milk of a girl
named Saima
no Seema no
Simran no
something
anything
whatever it takes
to force us to smell what has happened
*Kashmir, they want to make a movie out of you
they do, Kashmir, you know they do
but I will make a poem
from the sounds of you
kaash, Urdu for If only
aakaash, Sanskrit for Sky
mir, Arabic for Prince
mere, English for slight
though derived from the Latin for pure
Mirror Lake
shattered by a single raindrop
fallen from your Sky, Kashmir
nineteen forty-
seven years bad luck
dispelled by mere love
if only
*Line of beauty, Line of Control
verse line, plumb line, spooling
down to the bottom of Dal Lake,
of Manasarovar, of the Well of Souls
where the original temple
with algae in her hair, under
the original mosque with plankton-
tessellated ceilings
is toured by a lone Kashmiri carp
big-eyed, a most religious gawp
a single plumb line
a Line of Control
piercing extinguished mandala
and drowned mihrab alike
its delicate vertical shimmer
traced skyward
to the belly of the patient orb weaver
spinning this story, a spider
that prays for
that preys on
Kashmir
Kashmir
*In the blockbuster about Kashmir
the brave and hunted soldier
mans his position in rocky Ladakh
like a scorpion against a wall
the bad guys try to draw him out
first they set a hostage
from his regiment on fire
nothing except for a grim salute
and a single manly tear
now they’ve set his elderly father on fire
who knows how they found him
our hero holds his position
he has orders
a village
some women
his scripture
nothing
but when they torch his flag
out he springs
screaming Nahin!, billygoating
down the rockslide
he caused in an earlier scene
with a lucky grenade
and now he puts the flag out
with his body, writhing
with it on the ground
while the gunfire
penetrates him from the mountains
he fucks Kashmiri soil
through that burning
flag while bullets
fuck him from
the back
four minutes
twenty-seven seconds of this
(I timed it on my phone)
before he screams and writhes and bleeds
his last
on a bare patch in the grass
the only sort of orgy
the Indian censors would pass
*In a mountaintop temple
masked by a mosque
in Ladakh
Shiva
sits shiva
for Shiva
*The sky above the fire
is a reading test
does the smoke above a daughter’s
dream diary of a body
cracked open
so that laid flat
she stays open
does that smoke rise and tremble
into Urdu script
or does it curl in an Aum
dream diary
a book where nothing much
was written yet
holier than the Vedas
holier than the Qur’an
gone
dream diary
with just her name on the front page
maybe a little heart to dot the i
what do you need her name to be
to share this nightmare with
Kashmir
her name is Imani
or if you prefer it
Shivani
eye test: right faith, left faith
read the bottom line for me
how about now?
now?
communal myopia
twenty twenty
I have never seen so clearly
I make an idol
in the image of a child
but at this distance
can the sculptor see the model
can the prayer reach the agni
can the adhaan reach the fear
if calling poems from my tower
I’m powerless
here
an ocean the size of a
language away from
Kashmir
Nightcap
God’s vodka: notglass after notglass full of text,
each thirst more disenchanting than the next
Amit Majmudar is a novelist, poet, translator, essayist, and diagnostic nuclear radiologist. Majmudar’s latest books are the poetry collection What He Did in Solitary (Knopf, 2020) and Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary (Knopf/Penguin Random House India, 2018) as well as two novels published in India, Soar (Penguin Random House India, 2020) and Sitayana (Penguin Random House India, 2019). His forthcoming books include the biographical novel Mohammed and the Mahatma (HarperCollins India, 2022) and the children's fantasy book Heroes the Colour of Dust (Puffin India, 2022). His novel Partitions (Holt/Metropolitan, 2011) was shortlisted for the HWA/Goldsboro Crown Prize for Historical Fiction and was named Best Debut Fiction of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, and his second novel, The Abundance (Holt/Metropolitan, 2013), was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio Program. His poetry has appeared in The Best of the Best American Poetry 25th Anniversary Edition, numerous Best American Poetry anthologies, as well as the Norton Introduction to Literature, The New Yorker, and Poetry; his prose has appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017, The Best American Essays 2018, and the New York Times. His first poetry collection, 0',0', was shortlisted for the Norma Farber Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his second collection, Heaven and Earth, won the Donald Justice Award. He also edited an anthology of political poetry, Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now (Knopf, 2017). Winner of the Anne Halley Prize and the Pushcart Prize, he served as Ohio's first Poet Laureate. He practices diagnostic and nuclear radiology in Westerville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife, twin sons, and daughter.