SUMMER 07: Anushka Anastasia Solomon
Added: April 2007 to Babel (archive)
On The Subject of War
Anushka Anastasia Solomon is a former Denver Post columnist and poet. In 1995, she won third prize in the IV National New Straits Times - Shell Short Story Competition. A graduate of Hampshire College (Amherst, Massachusetts) she transferred from the University of Missouri-Columbia's School of Journalism to study creative writing under Jamaican poet laureate and professor of writing Andrew Salkey. Her chapbook "Please, God, Don't Let Me Write Like A Woman" will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2007. Anushka taught English in Malaysia to America- and Australia-bound students. She has chosen not to return to Malaysia since her conversion to Christianity in 1998. A list of her published works can be viewed at her blog.
On the Subject of War
for Rabindranath Tagore
I will not sit with disheveled hair, myself, unconscious
of the grounds I tread, [1]Tagore; the burning desire of man
wrenches not only your book of poems from my hand.
The dreams I had full flower in the languor of the night
fall scattered without safe arbor, my faith falters -
We live in a world another poet says no poor man
ever picked his way out of. Life forces. This part -when
I am dragged by my hair- I turn the television off.
a loveless union ends where poems never end. Bruised, these lips.
Close like a purse. Like a foreign tongue women and children
are wrung. On either side of the temple I press mine hands.
Your poems are a jeweled comb on these desert sands.
Once the satellite dish goes up, they drink it in. Now. The
four corners of the prayer mat are too narrow to live on.
The four corners of the world are too wide not to sin on.
[2]but the gateway to heaven is everywhere
but the gateway to heaven is everywhere
but the gateway to heaven is everywhere
I will not look for another glowing city to burn. Neither
Mecca nor Madurai will burn in the fires of disaster
I will not look for the Nazarene or set my eyes, like oil lamps
At the doors of wastelands. There are no kings or lovers
In Israel or Palestine of whom to ask justice, a portion
equal to two females for one is too much
I am either taken out of man or belong in hellfire
When God brings me laughter, like a cup of cold
Water, I will open my mouth to their utter disgust
Pour your poems out, like a spout. Then clad in black
Like oil, these nine parts of desire will come unhinged
The river will run nubile. I will run naked and drown
the crescent moon, two or three or four times.
[1] Rabindranath Tagore - Bengali poet introduced to the western world by William Butler Yeats. Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
[2] A quote from Thomas Merton-monk and poet
© 2007 Anushka Anastasia Solomon