Creative Work: ‘who we are’ by Jessica Robinson

This week we have a poem from Canadian poet Jessica Robinson, entitled “who we are.” For her, love embodies various forms of being, but never human. Each section focuses on a different element, concluding with a powerful last stanza. 

who we are

1.
I once had a boy made of water. He lived
in a glass jar, would swim around and ask me to
take him to the pool. He loved dolphins and
he never looked at me. He called me Jonah
and swallowed me whole.
I called myself Geppetto, took to fishing inside
of him. I had a boy made of water and he would melt me
like sugar and I would hate it. He would pull my insides out
and leave them strewn across the yard. He would whisper his
secrets into conch shells but not my ear. I had a boy made
of water and he didn’t love me and I didn’t want him to.
He thought I left him for fire and I didn’t but I
wanted to.

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Creative Work: “The Dark Girl Going Places” and “Honor” by Tanushree Ghosh Dhall

This week we are featuring another poet, Tanushree Ghosh Dhall, and two of her poems: “The Dark Girl Going Places” and “Honor”. “Dark Girl” tells a story of a girl moving across the world, and how her standard of beauty is drastically altered. “Honor” is a heartbreaking remembrance of trauma and abuse that ends on a moment of hope – the hope of finding true happiness in another despite years of striving to be accepted.

The Dark Girl Going Places
 
How does it feel to be a dark girl changing countries?
To be attractive in one but not in another?
To have a secret stash of fairness creams
Useless and embarrassing now – but just in case

To be able to wear bright colors all of a sudden?
Knowing no one here will object

How does it feel to see what they see?
To dare and feel beautiful ..
After being admonished so many times?

To browse newsfeeds about outrage in the twitter sphere
against discrimination real and perceived
blackface, Oscars, lip shapes..
While staring at the newspaper the parcels from home came wrapped in
asking for fair brides only

Creative Work: ‘My Husband, the Statistician’, and ‘Better Than Fiction’ by Erica Brenes

This week we are featuring two poems by Erica Brenes. “My Husband, The Statistician” is a beautiful, loving description of two poets, each in their own way — a husband and wife both equals and opposites. “Better Than Fiction” is an equally heartfelt tribute to a shared life better than one created in the head of a writer.

My Husband, the Statistician

You wake before me, and you dig beneath the covers.
Lying at the foot of our bed, you then uncover
Just the smallest bit of me.

With care, with tenderness,
with a palpable quietness,
and me still asleep,
you then drag the blunt edge of your thumb
across the vein that so often juts from the top of my right foot.

Pronounced and raised,
It speaks out beneath my tattoo,
and you speak back.

Creative Work: ‘Withdrawal’ by Francesca Lo Basso

This week we are bringing you another piece fresh from the Kingston MFA programme. Francesca Lo Basso takes us to the front lines in this poem whose rhythm echoes that of soldiers’ footsteps. ‘Harrowing’ would be the best way to describe this piece, which uses the sonnet form to hammer out a poignant point. 

Withdrawal

The question is: how do you stop a war?
Your body frozen, your mouth metallic—
through what new breach will you attack this chore?
As bullets rain from gun barrels phallic
and blistering bombs burden, burst, and blaze,
do you lay down your rifle, mock defeat?
Turn tanks in their tracks, greyed blur in the haze—
reliance, defiance, chivalrous retreat?
Do you beg? Do you wheedle? Do you con?
Does your voice resound? Does it rattle, roar?
The question still remains as we move on
to the refrain: how do you stop a war?
Empty words for soldiers now departed
because the hallowed truth is you don’t start it.

This poem finds its strength where most pieces might fail, in asking questions. The rhythmic questioning of outdated practices only emphasises the underlying theme – the pointlessness of war. 

Join us again next week for another jaw-dropping piece!

Creative Work: ‘The Forge’ by Alex Brinded

Kingston MFA student Alex Brinded returns to Words, Pauses, Noises this week with a piece which confronts the raw power of nature.

‘The Forge’ is all about sound and sensation. We encourage you to read this one aloud to get the full effect.

The Forge

Wind-pulled, world-spun waves
crash, a golden
scimitar of shore
glinting in the late morning sun heat.
Raging breakers rain hammer blows and
beat, down
upon this land’s frayed hem.

Each minute
grain
millions of years old,
twenty three quintillion atoms across.

Mere stone particles that
once were fused as crude formations—
a millennia of barrage has pummelled this coast
line into fundamental
parts.

Now, an acute banked blade of golden grit,
no longer breakable,
perfected
in the spouting forge.
White water rollers fracture into white noise.

My burrowed palm and fingers are swaddled in the sand.
It gives easy as I dig down,
it’s cool
and soft
down here.

Bold images and strong sounds match the broad scope of the poem’s subject matter. Brinded takes us from the large expanse of time—the world’s creation—down into a single moment all in the space of several short stanzas.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to stop by again next week for more great work from around the world!

Creative Work: ‘lessons from mum (the hardest poem I’ve ever wrote)’ by Yessica Klein

This week we have a poem from the talented writer and photographer Yessica Klein.

The power of this poem comes from its potent honesty. As a discussion of feminism through the view of someone not familiarised with the lofty theories behind it, this poem shines a refreshing and forceful light on the core of relationships between mother and daughter.

lessons from mum (the hardest poem I’ve ever wrote)

mum married a man who drank as her father
whom she lost at 15 due to alcohol poisoning

motherhood was her dream
so she gave up her job to raise her daughters properly
and both left
one to Berlin
one to Stockholm
at 22 and 20 respectively

Creative Work: ‘Aphasia’ by Goirick Brahmachari

This week we have a poem from New Delhi-based poet Goirick Brahmachari.

‘Aphasia’ explores the relationship between language, words, and our sense of place in the world. The poem has a frenetic quality which pulls the reader in, and doesn’t let them go.

Aphasia

Hollowness grows
like a pink boil in my feet
framing tinted nightmares
at right angles
gripping my neck
after you have left
for office, out of breath
a studio apartment in web
garbage bins,
bad breath
burning
my poems
in morning toothpaste,
breaking into tears
biting my tongue
bleeding distance
from self
a thousand miles
and a sea away,
waiting
for a crazy alienating hunger to fill me up—
and I cannot understand a word.

Using tactile images and biting words, Brahmachari creates a sense of tumbling momentum in this piece which hints at the panic and pain of losing one’s words. The repetition of the breath, along with the taste and feel of the mouth and neck, makes reading the poem a very vivid experience.

Join us again next week for more exciting work!

Creative Work: ‘Julie’ by Subramanian K. S.

This week we have the pleasure of featuring a poet from India. Subramanian K.S. shares his distinctive style and jaunty use of language in ‘Julie’, a piece which harkens back with a harrowing message. This poem is nostalgic for any reader who knows what i means to be hampered down with responsibilities. 

Julie

Some leer, a few jeer
the rest cheer at Julie,
Circus girl, flexing her
sinewy frame; acrobatics

Creative Work: ‘Fall’ by Bhaswati Ghosh

The leaves are changing, the wind is growing cold, and the smell of fall is in our noses.

We herald the arrival of Autumn with the poem ‘Fall’ by repeat contributor Bhaswati Ghosh—a celebration of the changing seasons and a reminder of the sweetness that comes with the chill in the air.

Fall

The air has sinusitis.
It spits out cold,
skin-tingling sneezes.

Sunsets morph into giant
pumpkins and sink
down grocery store shelves.
The earth, tired of bareness,
covers her breast with
fallen leaves.

Gold-tangerine-crimson colonize
trees; chlorophyll fades
like the vaporous
dream called summer.

Creative Work: ‘Chaos Theory’ and ‘Cold War Babies’ by Howie Good

This week we have two poems by Howie Good, varied in content, but similar in the understated, sinister style in which they are delivered. He forces the audience to look between and beyond the words to understand the full picture illustrated by its author.

Chaos Theory

Life grew heavy with the weight of names. You were drunk all the time. Sunshine, you said, looking up from your whiskey, is an overrated virtue. It was fashionable to die young and be pessimistic. One day for entertainment, you visited the mental hospital. You seemed to smile while observing patients writhing in straitjackets and howling, their sex hard to guess. By the middle of the afternoon, you had started back for home, where the chaos was more familiar and bulldozers pushed bodies like dirt. The road to the station was slow going, barely a road at all, but a long and depressing spell of rain and, when night came, a hangman’s black hood.