Salman Toor, Sleeping Boy, 2019.
somewhere near the perineum, a mass of vessels breathe into a knot; you whisper that the tip of my tongue is reaching a station we have never explored; we keep tugging our luggage between shadow borders, the flimsy reams of spit meshing together imagined colonies; finally, the algorithm vomits into seizure; your infinite outline reminds me of that priest convulsing; i come bearing gifts i plead to them, i come in peace.
we memorise the last afternoon; you delivering your special edicts on leaving; a dictator commanding his army of shaving blades; I don’t want your image to touch me; your eyes have become forest, whispering, like a labyrinth in season. your wrist points towards a catalogue of our dreams, now horridly imbalanced; our ledge without history.
you will leave; your feet will reach the window, the pendant dangling like a child gnawing at our threads; yet, i will stay; i will look around, horrified, as face after face will make an appearance, scheduled and colloquial; like a pickpocket, i will search for mercy within the crowd, almost stealing you in a rare, mystic lunge.
almost.
Salman Toor, Bar Boy, 2019
Footnotes from Section 377
After Ocean Vuong’s Seventh Circle of Earth
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CRIMINAL ORIGINAL JURISDICTION[1] WRIT PETITION (CRIMINAL) NO. 76 OF 2016 NAVTEJ SINGH JOHAR & ORS. VERSUS UNION OF INDIA THR. SECRETARY MINISTRY OF LAW AND JUSTICE
A.In (Meharban) Nowshirwan Irani v. Emperor[2], for instance, a police officer observed Nowshirwan, a young shopkeeper, engaged in homosexual acts with a young man, Ratansi, through a keyhole in Nowshirwan’s house.
B.In D P Minwalla v. Emperor[3], Minawalla and Taj(mahomed) were seen having anal intercourse in a lorry and were arrested, charged, and found guilty under Section 377.
[1] My Petition, My Petition/What is the jurisdiction of pleasure?/Who is the secretary of scandal?/Which court gives the supreme rimjob?/Which law is anally banal? /Hear, Hear
[2] I envy your gaze, officer/ holding every muscle in place/ you quiver to their dripping sweat/ moans running engines down your thighs/the key in your hand slips/combustion begins/I petition
[3] your infidel names/ones which became immortal/even the four minarets in white marble/static under archaeology’s burden/cannot match the earthquake of your lorry/ that passion truck prowling the highway/ strobe-lighting up henna and cigarette advertisements/you cum silvers of the moon/I petition
C.In Ratan Mia v. State of Assam[4], the Court convicted two men (one aged fifteen and a half, the other twenty) under Section 377 and treated them as equally guilty, as he was unable to cast one of them as the perpetrator and the other as the victim or abettor.
[4] In which Symposium was your lovemaking honed?/now memory writes your juvenile testimony/the archive seals forever vows/my excavation, the paperwork of hypocrisy/I cannot forget/your ink spills beyond history, equally/I petition
Edict on Love
You have worn my shirt so muslin
that you keep weaving back into light
the buttons undone, I catch a part of your ribs, existing
where your hair should be I find ribbons, untangling,
like the ones schoolgirls wear through narrow bridges
Nibbling on your ear,
I pick up biscuit crumbs of your skin like
the important news of the morning
here in your thighs, the birthmarks glisten like the sulphur earrings
of the dew’s surface
I kiss your mole,
the branch towards an afterlife fractures open
I ask you then of the course of our fever
the path of this disease which helps us
decipher the kindness of this world
you stretch your fist on the terrace and
pull down an unknowing clothesline
I think about you
when I am someone else’s;
perhaps then, I’ve loved you the most.
The bougainvillaeas have started speaking
all over Delhi again,
from the corners of the eye,
breathe the tombs; bright purple –
You have taught me to hold this colour.
Last Sunday, I brought you a flower you did not know the name of.
A small victory, I had laughed to myself.
After that, we clawed each other till we came.
Slowly, softly we are marking our bodies,
unlearning the maps of our colonisers.
Tribhanga
On these days when I rarely feel like a man
I break my body at every juncture
– Shoulder,
– Hips,
– Mind.
In all of these black-white days,
I become citizen of Bharat.
A shloka visions a dream;
1:1 Of the Divine Destroyer, who will suture the truths of the planet, be wary
1:2 Of Hate whose face I see so clearly, beware
1:3 Of Destruction which wants to eat with the Gods only to forget that they are images.
So here I am, facing the Divine Emperor and I am trying to put all my rage in front of Him.
The entirety of my country’s rage, my world’s rage.
But I speak not word, I become the limitation of my skin
which is a newly sprouting virus.
I am bound by skin and language
and masks
and penis and hate,
and I’m searching for you.
In this forest where you are lost,
I keep looking for you everywhere,
I keep returning to only find you lost.
I look inside my heart and find only desolation.
So, on the days when I do not feel like my country,
I stance tribhanga.
Rayan Chakrabarti is a poet and academic working at the intersections of memory, body and nation. His work has been featured in SerendipityArts, Mascara Literary Review, MulberryLiterary and Writing Women among others.
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