Inquisition Palace and Jewish Ghetto, Lisbon (2009)
...human and ecological echoes at places fractured by trauma and political violence...
(Quintan Ana Wikswo)
scarred door-frames retain
suggestion of gouging
nothing specific the way
clouds form from rising
air cooling to shape-shift
how earthquakes raze
buildings that are built again:
take amnesiac Rossio Square,
where waves of black
& white cobblestones verge
a mineral homage
based on the sea yet geometric
no trace of the quarry
work performed by lost fingers:
now flashpackers unfold maps
buskers reel sing & jig
vendors roast chestnuts
laminate photos for tourists
new surfaces to varnish the past
with a translucent eternal
present again & again reborn:
on café tables heaped high
with bowls of snails
salgados pastries agua com gas
in baroque pediments
shadows under conical pinnacles
the columns twisting
like rope strands or human hair:
overlay upon overlay if palimpsest
clouds retain carbonaceous
memories of the city’s many Jews
burned at this very spot in space
no eulogy falls nor plaque raised
the flower stalls still burst
with bunches of fresh lavender:
encoded in bygone yellow facades
dripping with hieroglyphs of laundry
lost hands begin to dismantle the bronze
statue of Dom Pedro IV
turning his patina back into slurry
cries from the last auto-da-fes
resounding once more for all to hear:
only in hearing such scorched song
may old scars unmar unmark
mezuzot reappear on doorposts
red-tiled roofs reaching back
through time by the rushing banks
of the Tagus to find a place
recollected unconverted & gestational:
The Virtues of Vandalism
with Daniel Donaghy
Burnt-out taxis rust, lozenges on a tongue of rain.
We hurl rocks against doors and fenders,
smash through windows, kick tires axle-deep in mud.
We hop onto running boards and yell Follow that car!
We jump from trunk to rooftop to hood
over a hundred top lights, over ferns, puddles, rising moss.
We have all day. The cars sink too slowly into forest
floor, so we make up for lost time
by hastening decay, leaving bootprints on hoods
we traverse, unscrewing gearshift knobs to hang
as hip hop medallions around our necks.
Soon, the underbrush will overwhelm these chassis
and we’ll have to shave, but for now, nothing exists
but these still odometers and the stories
we steal from their miles, these fused steering
wheels on which we tap time with our fists,
tuning long-gone radio dials to whatever
song we want, bad asses, OGs, mountain kings,
spit-screaming rhymes into each other’s grills,
scratching bass grooves into dashboards
far from home, far from school’s dead engine
of fractions and film strips and allegiances
we learned by rote, far from corner
girls we conjured up and advised to hang on
in our battered back seats, calling out the moon
to echo with our brazen sound, shine
pearlescent off the chrome droptop of dope rides
just like this, but in perpetual motion, throaty
rumbling from drive in to overlook,
any quick escape from the fumes of family
we choke on like the one among us huffing
Krylon Gold Metallic from a cut
off sweatshirt arm because he will always be
there to push it too far. There’s pure potential
in a windshield before it smashes.
A funhouse mirror image of grace in that sliver
of night where it seems like anything can happen
to anyone at anytime and we are flying
smack dab through the middle of that energy field.
Sun Wu Kong and Hanuman Share Secrets
with Frances Kwa-Hwang Wang
Yes, Lycra can improve your performance but it feels so wrong to be putting on Underarmor with my Hawaiian print skirt for tonight’s poetry reading, let alone shoes.
As the leaves change and the first snow falls, I ask myself again, “Why am I here?”
My friends tease that I should turn on the heat, but they all have tenure. Already I feel the chill of the next few months rolling in.
No, you and I should be someplace restless and warm, eating papayas with lime, salt on our lips and sand in our toes.
It is an accident of history that we are here.
A historical accident that we are dropped in an unasked for womb at an unexpected time, languishing on a coast or in the heartland in one continent or another, instead of nestled in a condor's nest.
Leaves turning to fire before they shrivel in the driveway to crunch like pages ripped from old books.
The Buddhists say that each instant our karma is ripening with respect to another, from seeds planted in another life, tended in this one, until the fruit, musky and butter-like in its consistency, with peppery undertones in its innermost cavity falls to the ground, begging to be eaten. I would feed you chunks of such fruit if not for the fact of this distance.
Then all you would have to do is follow the trail of lights on this dark night, and walk with me until the moon returns.
It is as simple as clay, mustard oil, wick, and spark.
Until the Lions is forthcoming in late 2015 from HarperCollins India and Arc Publications, UK.
Ravi Shankar is Poet-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust and the founding editor of Drunken Boat. He has published or edited seven books of poems, including Deepening Groove, Radha Says, Seamless Matter, Voluptuous Bristle, Wanton Textiles, and Instrumentality. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (W.W Norton & Co.), called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared on the BBC and NPR, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong.