Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
In the moments my mother mothers me
and lies, or says what she believes to be true (I am never sure), to
come up with the ideas that she thinks will hold me
to her, and maintain belief I am still bound to her,
she will remain the parent;
I wonder how tough it was for that umbilical cord to
snap which had bound us, of which I was unconscious in
those nine months and after when she was all too aware,
and answered.
The consciousness that parents care and
know best, and always speak truth
is what we ((lower?)middle-class kids) grow up with—a surety such as the gulmohar
outside will always give shade and bear fiery flames.
That gulmohar died gradually over our growing-warmer summers
in our global-warming days.
No one cooks like ammi. Her shami kebabs are
more famous than Tunde’s, her biryani stands in sharper
relief than Rushmore and bears the most succulent meat.
The taste of her daal, I can never recreate; I
visit her every weekend.
That time she put out the fire, she was our hero.
When my uncle dousedthe petrol with a bucket of
water, and the blaze went beaming across the courtyard floor,
another uncle,then a fireball, who had first kindled the fuel,
had run out into the street,and we stood impaled;
she had the nerve and presence of mind
to (sacrificeher new madhumalti,
and) throw down the pots
to smother fire
with earth.
There used to be no one prettier…
at Nainital, once, she nearly drowned.
She dies her hair—not black, but dark brown,
I have my first grey, and a perpetual frown.
Maaz Bin Bilal is Assistant Professor in Literary Studies at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, at JGU. His first book of poems, Ghazalnama, is forthcoming from Yoda Press in 2019.
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