We asked some of our emerging writers and poets to send in their response to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Here, Nisha D’cruz shares reflections on a couple of poems about place and belonging.
“These poems are about places that are very special to me. In the recent weeks, I have been reflecting on the many streets I have wandered. I thought a lot about being the same person in different places, or a different person in the same place (child, daughter, woman, lover). I sat alone in the sun, I looked at photos of these places, I thought about people who were special to me in those times and spaces. I want these poems to make people feel something – maybe what I felt when I was in those places, but maybe something completely new to them. Sometimes (not always) it can be as simple as that.”
Southern River
The street
where my street
meets his street
becomes our street.
We stroll hand in hand,
the sun rises
and sets
in our orbit.
The day is always longer
than the one
that came before,
and yet never
long enough.
Jalan Rasah
The air
touches you like a lover,
hot breath on neck,
presses against shoulders,
wraps around thighs.
Wear it like a second skin.
Wash the street smell off
at the end of the day,
hear the fishmonger cackling down the drain,
the greying women cooing
from flower stalls outside temples,
the sharp pop!
of flour coated banana
dropped into boiling oil.
Again, the heavy air-
suffocating in the middle of the night,
always grabbing for more more more,
clawing against the the curve of sleep.
Wake up drowning.
In the monsoon season, the clouds hang low.
Stick your finger out and feel the air
heavy and wet with waiting,
water moving under paddy fields.
I am a child again and I sit in the street with the next-door boy for hours.
The milkman pinches my cheeks,
my grandfather sells old newspapers to the big truck
with the loud Chinese uncle leaning out the window,
my brothers ride the bicycles
up and down the old train track.
I eat a whole durian cross-legged on the kitchen floor,
face flushed with greed,
licking lips,
lapping hot milo out of a saucer like a cat.
Hear the call to prayer 5 times a day-
the next-door boy hunches down next to his father.
I pull aside curtain,
peek through grilled window.
There is an ache
in the pit of my stomach,
hard seed in soft fruit.
No train rumbles down
the abandoned tracks,
and yet
the earth trembles.
Bloc La Bordetta
The sun doesn’t set
in Barcelona,
it melts.
Soft butter in the frying pan,
orange clouds licking
its sides.
The whole city
a cacophony of buskers,
beggars and taxi drivers-
all swearing at tourists.
The sky stays blue
for hours after nine pm.
I roam the streets for days
and never find a mailbox.
I carry around a postcard
that says I wish you here,
wander the plaza of
pigeons and old men
sharing wooden benches
toddlers kicking balls.
A brick wall tagged
BLOC LA BORDETTA
marks those to whom
this place belongs,
and who
belong to this place.
Shrouded in silky morning mist,
I call a lover
but he does not pick up.
And so
there is nothing left
to do
but drink wine
and eat fish-
pick the bones out
of soft flesh
with my fingers,
be bathed in cigarette smoke,
let my hair curl down my back,
let my skin burn in the sun,
stare back at old men in a bar,
watch them watch me
watch my body
my soft flesh
my bones
until
there is nothing left
to do
but watch the sun melt
and the sky turn from yellow
to pink to blue
to midnight blue.
