April 2019

I bring you out of the wardrobe dressed in Astrakhan,foetal curls of black wool that never breathed.I stroke and stroke and bury my face in your warmth.Feeling you yield, I lift the heavy collar until it coversmy ears and half my

How would you like to feel in your body J Mase III asked before beginning his workshop with a group of thirteen womxn and trans folx dealing with body trauma? How would you humanise your scars? Can you write yourself

Not a hop, step and jump, but a stumblefrom the gravel road, when a stubbed toeleads the way to a giant leap since the house was on the low side of the streetapproached by descending steps, flanked by rose bushes

හෙවත් අනිච්ඡාවත සංකාරා A woman was killed in my neighbourhood in 2011, because of Love! I saw it with my own eyes, as did the many who were around. Millions of women are getting killed everywhere in the world but,

At the age of six, probablyI remember my mother sayingthat there are these sacred parts in my body that I should not let anyone touchAnd to me it seemed pretty absurd, how the ugliest and the dirtiest partsbecome sacred? And I

Ganesh at Saravana’s flicks, in a frenzy,the sequined sarees off the display lineabove the doorway, as the rain beats in,and Selvakumari crouches on the pavement, her face crumpled, shivering,by the wall of The Happy Food Corner. Dressed in grimy, threadbare rags,Her

                                                                                                            To Ali Osama and mewe dreamtof making Palestine free.From Yarmouk* we used to followthe events in Gaza and imaginewe would dieas martyrson Palestinian soil. We could neverhave imagined that warwould knock on our doors.We could never have imaginedthat Osama would leave this

Is this where that karthakolomban tree was?’ Standing near the sun-wilted crimson anthurium flowers, Jude was so deeply lost in thought that he did not realise his Bata flip-flops were being attacked by a sea of angry ants. The cloudy sky above

The grandmother ever at my shoulderWhat harm another little nub of butter?A pinch of sage would lift the whole thing Navigating the gaps as nimbly now as she didIn her dimly-lit kitchen with its three trip-up steps to sprinkle and stirHer

Where are you, oh my fairy godmother!You searched this corner and the other.Swabbing the stains of your own goreWhen his anger shoved you and more. Do you exist or did you become extinct?You moaned in silence but distinct.He might hear me cry

First it was gold the untold storyraindrops in the gardenof longing she wrote it down tore it, ate the wordsthey were anything but sweetswallowed hard what gorgonthat was just a bad hair day my ringlets my pearlshow many men were lost

I learned to love storms as a young man,Because storms were all I knew.Anger and intensity everywhere;Home daily ripped by lightning flashesOf unexpected violence and unexplained pain. I learned to survive on an open sea Of pain and hostility; Hiding