Clearing House
This is somebodies Bombay.
Somebodies home, somebodies hell,
Mumbai,
somebodies island, somebodies embroidery
project, cross-stitch heaven, a cobbler
weaves islands into soles of shoes,
slippers, bare-
foot skin, chapped and tired
like the 13 million pasted inside the geometry
of a minute. It is chappals
that flip, flap, slap, slip hook a microphone
to each flip flop, feet slap Bombay asphalt.
Even the sea turns silent and stares at commuters
conjoined to bodies, ironed into, and like countries
on maps, or poems this is somebodies
Bombay somebodies Mumbai,
somebodies eighth floor Bandra apartment,
somebodies basti, somebodies café,
somebodies view from Chinchpokli
somebodies thali, somebodies vada pav and cutting,
somebodies Haji Ali, somebodies Mount Mary,
somebodies Siddhivinayak, somebodies Agiary,
somebodies Voodoo, somebodies Gaylord,
somebodies Toto’s, somebodies Churchgate Virar
VT, Melanie’s address – you breathe like an animal
your islands grained and joined/are flanks you kicked
apart isn’t it difficult to hear,
you ask, ears pressed against loud speakers
for years to tell in what language Bombay speaks.
Sweat trickles down his hair,
down his back, down his nape,
dribbles to the Y of his ass, a tickle, a flood, mute,
that is memory,
that refuses to dry out like rain,
or Anthony Bullet-wala who dances amid
the drip of rust, hemoglobin pool of screws,
carburetors watch him pirouette
in exhaust slipstreams, go visit him opposite Khar Danda
road near Aeroplane Garden, Santacruz.
The woman, the hijra, the man at the corner,
at Four Bungalows, at Malcolm Baug,
at Sai Baba Wadi, at Model Town
hold sinew and flesh together, hold sky, mind, water,
earth, Mumbai’s girth, its greased hinges, the inlet
and valves, the bent trusses of darkness inside
Bombay’s viscera it’s breakfast time
at Kala Ghoda as elsewhere/in
and around Bombay – up and down/the
whole hungry longitude.
Which empty stomach will Mumbai fill? There’s no fish,
there’s no meat. No Arun. No faith. He looks for poetry
in High Street Phoenix and In Orbit, dead books, love –
no booze to fill stomachs, to make it all forget,
where the mind hides behind words,
until the line is outside the city itself
where each push makes strangers intimate
on trains, streets, parks, in beds,
in rickshaws, in BEST buses, in defecation –
a duress of touch. Who is alone?
Whoever is, is really alone in Mumbai.
Like the lonely Mumbaikars
who take a cab to the Manhattan-like
Unreality of Nariman Point/ who will ignore
The junk-shops, the tea-houses,
the restaurants, the markets –
it’s only been a couple of minutes
in deep time since John Colville – the Scottish one, left –
a few kilometers in deep space
from Oman, Dakar, New York, Trinidad
and Tobago, pigeons haunt Selvon
in London,
Cockroaches hover about [Dilip’s] soul.
Mice scurry around [Dilip’s] metaphysics,
Lizards crawl over [Dilip’s] religion,
spiders infest [Dilip’s] politics.
He is just a stoned minor Hindu god. How do we remember?
There’s traffic in deep time – in deep space
it takes him two hours
from Andheri to Churchgate, in the rain.
In deep time – in deep space like Gieve,
he does not suspect that this ride
Will be for [him] the beginning of a meditation
On the nature of truth and beauty.
They just die, tossed off a glittering edge
of railway track, nip
in the mornings like the lip of tired flesh,
they crouch under sunburned corrugated
sheets, shaving from dirty plastic mugs, sweat,
this broken face of reflection, in the rain.
The only memory they take to heaven
is the 7 A.M.
fast, that shatters past underwear
stretched across ankles.
He curses shit,
they are pregnant in Mumbai. It squeezes
them through the eye of a needle, the belly
like a balloon strangled in its midriff –
Bombay, sing them a sewing machine lullaby.
Their shriveled breasts show through cracks
in the blouse
their little origami hands
claw plexiglass, car windows, make their way
into folds of jackets and shirts at the elbow
like finger puppets.
You watch their show for free and eagerly wait
for deep time deep space traffic jams to free.
At Bandstand, at a Barista, he smokes a cigarette.
Three men stare at a rock-drenched sunset,
scratch names on the back of mirrors –
they just sit, eat, kiss, play, walk, fuck
on the promenade by the sea –
at Bandstand
their bodies pierced with spears, through cheeks,
like chicken tikkas.
They whip skin
in some god’s name, for tourists from Germany,
Ludhiana, Ukraine, Jakarta, Cuddalore, Bahrain,
download celluloid data
framed
by the Castella de Aguada and the Taj Lands End.
At the intersection of Naoroji Furdoonji St.
and SB Road, he sits in Olympia
spooning a Butter Scotch Falooda to watch the Maratha
conclave congregate at Leopold Café.
I, the honored
Peshwa Bajirao Vishvanath Bhatt,
the elder, thorala,
built the Shaniwar Wada
with teak from the dark lilac jungles of Junnar,
where leopards
and wild boar wander
as bold as the warriors I take to battle –
those loyal Kshatriyas,
the utterly royal guards.
Each crack in each fortress-stone bled
with the toil of the Marathas
from Chinchwad, and lime
from the quarries of Jejuri salting the plastering,
pasted with the dark and raked palms
of my sturdy peasants. I’ve reserved a table for four.
The grandson of Chattrapati Shivaji,
a POW in Aurangzeb’s catacombs
I remember you Bajirao.
You always had that sparkle in your eye, a real talent –
I conceded to the Mughals in more than one way,
but I had a mother to worry
about, and the Swaraj of the homeland nagged me
like a lower back pain.
Me, Chattrapati Shahu
remembers your Dilli Darwaja fondly, Kolhapur
was just a fleck
in the storm
that the Maratha Empire churned like the cumin seed
in that sweet and salted
buttermilk,
our lazy extent spanning from Pakistan to Orissa.
CrispyGingerPotatoesStirFriedTofuwithChineseGreens PaneerWontonsVegManchowSoupBuddhasDelight
VegetableAmericanChopsuey VegetableSchezwanChopsueyMoonFaanVegPotRice
ChillyOysterDryPrawn
BeefTeriyakiLeopoldSpecialSoupChikenAsparagus
Soup
BiryaniMango
JuiceReshmiKebabVegFriedRiceVegetableFriedMeFan
VegShanghaiRice
ChikenwithCashewnuts
CrispyFishinChillySauceChikenYanMienMosambi
JuiceKingfisherBanana
MilkshakeJumboPrawns VegHakkaNoodlesFriedEggsandToastSheekKebabsLassi.
Throw everyone out!
How can this realm concocted by the Chattrapti
be fouled by these stub
nosed auto-rickshaw drivers?
They have cut our hands, the same hands
that built the Shaniwar Wada.
They flick the meters of economy
in every round trip of the reclamation,
the warriors of an empty stomach
litter this Maratha soil with bare bodies on balmy
nights in Bandra.
That shriveled breast, that finger puppet
on serrated footpaths, as if, reclining
in the ears of a silver conch –
have we conceded, or forgotten the murmur
of an ocean, native rain, the saffron monsoon?
Don’t let this politics become comic strips.
I too have a mother to worry about
and Swaraj! What a word!
A hungry mother is a hungry child.
But,
the orphans in slums, stench; ma’s breasts turn
hollow and threadbare. Throw everyone out!
Let them hover above the flint
stuffed navel of India for all they like.
Home Delivery|Call: 22828185/ 22020131
Tuka hears the voices
of mad men and also the sane forgiver;
the compassionate Lord
folded in penance next to me on a bus
from Dehu to Dadar.
His name relentlessly struck my dry lips.
I wonder why we all don’t turn
to Vitthala,
O sweet Lord of unity,
let’s all embrace bhakti –
a saccharine potion of love and devotion,
I have no grand wada to speak about,
nor does my kingdom trespass
beyond the boundaries of the soul,
like Tuka said a long time ago, “I’ve found
a sea of love, an inexhaustible flood.”
What if Bombay sinks? In love. In flood, in hate,
in rain, in sea, in exhaust –
will it and still, still restore us to fire Adil,
like a breeze,/cooling our garrulous evenings,
[that] investigates nothing,/
ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,/And settles
no one adrift of the mainland’s history.
What keeps it afloat? In love. In flood, in hate,
in rain, in sea, in exhaust –
is it the beating footfall of ten thousand slippers
like oars, cork dreams, inglorious thumbprints
on rupee notes, Dalal Street, Kamathipura, berry
pulao, Film City the smell of bat shit
at Kanheri caves, he tells
himself, this island is somebodies basalt, stone,
somebodies forest too.
It’s 2010, 2015, 2050 2110.
Powai is Lands End.
He sits by the estuary, watching strangers kiss,
the saltwater rising in mist off Vihar Lake –
they say Mithi flowed backwards once upon
a time. This is somebodies sé-
ance; there were once people who broke
lines somewhere in the middle of the page,
that trade’s gone now, no one crafts,
but the fire still burns at low
tide, on top floors of apartment blocks,
half submerged – water-walkers, air-walkers
who solicit basalt, concrete and wind at Mumbai’s
heel, dug deep in deep salt flats
with fishes, those flamingoes still flick pink
in winter.
The wada’s, Castella de Aguada, the Taj Lands
End are underwater, nothing to reclaim,
salvage is a business,
and the tourists still come, traffic
is still piled up in deep time deep space,
cars honk, the finger puppets
levitate like gods,
bare breasts stare at you and you watch
their show for free, there is no view
from Chinchpokli, no soul
no metaphysics, no religion
no politics,
only very fast trains, fast cock-
roaches, fast mice, fast spiders, nesting
in Mumbai’s empty gut.
They finally attest
language is nothing and Mumbai cannot breathe
like an animal there is nothing like truth
and beauty, somebody seems to have won,
he doesn’t know who,
but how do we remember? These people
who were modern, those poems
these stories – rewrite to plagiarize
this open source memory is Clearing House,
a séance, a redistribution of somebodies,
nobodies Mumbai, Bombay.
Longshot
Between Alamosa and Walsenburg in a Hyundai,
father calls, his insistence,
see the sand dunes because all American
towns look the same anyway.
It’s been forty years.
Conjure a past from table talk and longshots.
~
In ’71 I drove that Chevy into a cow
just outside West Lafayette, Indiana.
It was winter and there’s no snow in Madras,
the damn brakes on the Biscayne never worked.
~
It is history
that shuffles holy colors and rust,
juggles with wind, a temporary
face of sand, shifting, grain by grain
like the gift of plain speak he gives him.
~
From where he comes
in Palakkad, Kerala,
the brahmins are born twice,
the first time like everything else, in body and expulsion,
then in language, helical, roped in by sacred threads.
Who traded their tongues in flesh?
Song for song –
Flesh that speaks and licks at once.
~
Sand dunes have no mother tongue.
How can you say that? I still count in Tamil,
only patti spoke immigrant-AmerIyer-English.
Don’t forget to meet Ramachandran in Cupertino,
he never ate beef, but flipped burgers at Wendy’s.
~
He assembles confusion,
it tastes medium rare. He eats the cow.
State Highway 10 to La Junta
is closed, its detour via Pueblo
drawn into a triangle is already seen,
not wanting to remember this construct of story.
~
He never sees the sand dunes.
He drives past. Contemplates
the pros and cons of stasis, like American
towns – the past, the shifting sands,
the phantom permanence of concrete, faux red
brick sidings;
it’s a private thing, this stasis.
What He Said
to his heart perched on the steering wheel, just before all life on earth
approached a stalemate
A feast of trash, in trash, on ________
egrets imitate
crows, the rag pickers
of sores,
the typeset cud inside
regurgitated to chew on, in gut
suffocates; now it is only plastic
bags inside cows.
Under an afternoon
sun, where strays
build their enterprise,
amid gaunt dogs
barbed gods, wire and shards
of glass they bend to pull
from parched cracks, in parched
skin – away from avenues
seamed with rivet lines
of the Flame of the Forest.
The car creeps,
my fingers speak
a state of mind
on the steering wheel.
At her apartment window she stands,
watches traffic writhe, limbless.
Doubts all direction. All move-
ment. Stands tranquil. Like a thief.
She erases. Evidence. Footprints.
What She Said
to her girl-friend at work, her mind elsewhere, playing hide and seek with stones
In the morning he goes for a run
among boulders, those dark rumps
of elephants
beyond the field.
He doesn’t return until after I leave
for work.
I leave him half a pack of cigarettes,
cut melon in the refrigerator, lunch.
He doesn’t pick up the phone –
when I return
I know he’s gone.
He wants to tell me in person:
that he will leave me a note,
smoke my cigarettes,
hide every morning behind stones.
What Her Girlfriend Said
to herself, and something which no one in particular understood
The sky is analogous to the sea,
if light, reflection and color
are to be trusted.
He doesn’t know how to feel,
who is sky who is sea –
at night each dark slab
lies, one on top of another,
its extent, a thin permeable line.
It is both sky and sea
from where they stand
its shape beyond reach,
her stretched hands, unending.
Notes
Clearing House
“you breathe like an animal” is from Melanie Silgardo’s poem “Bombay” from Three Poets which is not buy(able). It died. But that’s okay. “it’s breakfast Bme...” is from Arun Kolatkar’s collecBon The Kala Ghoda Poems. You can walk to the Wayside Inn from Kala Ghoda, but unfortunately they too shut shop in 2002. “A cab to the ManhaLan-like...” all the way up to the poet who is called a “stoned minor Hindu god” is from Dilip Chitre’s poem “The View from Chinchpokli.” There is irony in gods in general – Dilip knew that. Are we all boots inside Janus-faced-cages? He wishes he knew Gieve Patel beLer. The lines “he will not suspect that this ride... truth and beauty” are from the poem “From Bombay Central.” He plans to buy Gieve’s 1991 collecBon Mirrored, Mirroring soon. Amazon doesn’t throw up anything, he will look elsewhere. Right now, he’s poetbroke too. “Restore us to fire... mainland’s history” is from “Sea Breeze, Bombay” by Adil Jussawalla. It’s the third poem in Missing Person. Imagine every poem ever wriLen, everywhere in the world is a house, apartment, shanty, jhopdi, cardboard box – and imagine someone maps the world in terms of poems. In case you get lost, this is the address: Missing Person, Part 2 – The Room and That, “Sea Breeze, Bombay” – page 39.
What He Said
This poem is an imitaBon of a love poem, an imitaBon of a poem, of a poem of a poem. This is an imitaBon. Based mostly on A.K. Ramanujan’s translaBons (“as [his] sense of English and Tamil would allow” – The Interior Landscape) of “classical” Tamil poetry from the second century CE. This poem simply aLempts to imitate a form it does not really know. What is one to do with deep Bme deep space?
What She Said
This is also an imitaBon of a love poem. In The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, the editors classify classical Tamil poetry into the akam and puram – “that which is inside” or “the inner world”, also called love poetry and “outside” or “public poetry” respecBvely. Apart from the didacBcism of this note, what is inside and outside? The duality is all movement, an elephant, a thin permeable line. Where is inside or outside – is only a spaBal trick.
What Her Girlfriend Said
More specifically, akam consists of unnamed personae who inhabit idealized landscapes. In The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, the authors write, “each landscape is associated with an aspect of love...”, thus bringing with it all the literal and metaphorical elements into the poem. In the aeerword of his book The Interior Landscape, A.K. Ramanujan says “akam poetry is directly about experience, not acBons...” and later tabulates the landscapes and their associated images. Maybe, the girlfriend is standing at the seashore.
Sushil Sivaram’s poems have appeared in New Quest – A Quarterly Journal of Participative Inquiry, REAL - Regarding Arts and Letters, Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry and Retort Magazine/Bareknuckle Poet. He is currently in a Ph.D. program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.