Graffiti at JNU | Photograph by Salik Shah
As part of Poets Respond series, we’re inviting poetry about recent events. You can find our submission guidelines here.
The Nation Wants to Know
by Zainab Ummer Farook
The nation wants to know
why you write poetry
when you should be studying
This pesky nation of yours
seems to want to know a lot,
so I will say this:
I am young
and furious, and my voice
gathers rust,
prone as it is to noise
that demands I sew my lips
into silences
where only
canned dreams
and clockwork desires
speak
I am young
and furious, and my voice
yearns to sing
to a different tune
and it will:
its frayed ends and jagged edges
will spill blood
on all that you declare holy –
on the 207-foot-tall tricolor
and the mandated 1-foot space
between
me
and the
boy
sitting next to me
on the weighted boots
of history
that condemned to death
a boy’s yearning for stardust
on the six yards of sanskaar
and fifty-inch veils of modesty
which brand my love
an obscenity
on the madness
that lynches a man
with just a lingering whisper
of look in his fridge
on the lines
that become fences
that become walls
built upon grave after grave
of frozen uniforms
and butchered hearts.
Yes,
hear me as I drip blood –
its red seeping
into an earth
where answers are weeds
and questions burst
into life
without fear
where poetry
hits every discordant note
on the way
as it soars above
auto-tuned voices
peddling doctored truths
and photoshopped patriotisms
So hear me
as I sing
as I kiss
as I tell
