they have no idea what it is like
to lose home at the risk of
never finding home again
to have your entire life
split between two lands and
become the bridge between two countries
- immigrant
look at what they’ve done
the earth cried to the moon
they’ve turned me into one entire bruise
- green and blue
you are an open wound
and we are standing
in a pool of your blood
- refugee camp
when it came to listening
my mother taught me silence
if you are drowning their voice with yours
how will you hear them she asked
when it came to speaking
she said do it with commitment
every word you say
is your own responsibility
when it came to being
she said be tender and tough at once
you need to be vulnerable to live fully
but rough enough to survive it all
when it came to choosing
she asked me to be thankful
for the choices i had that
she never had the privilege of making
- lessons from mumma
leaving her country
was not easy for my mother
i still catch her searching for it
in foreign films
and the international food aisle
i wonder where she hid him. her brother who had died only a year before. as she sat in a costume of red silk and gold on her wedding day. she tells me it was the saddest day of her life. how she had not finished mourning yet. a year was not enough. there was no way to grieve that quick. it felt like a blink. a breath. before the news of his loss had sunk in the decor was already hung up. the guests had started strolling in. the small talk. the rush. all mirrored his funeral too much. it felt as though his body had just been carried away for the cremation when my father and his family arrived for the wedding celebrations.
- amrik singh (1959–1990)
i am sorry this world
could not keep you safe
may your journey home
be a soft and peaceful one
- rest in peace
your legs buckle like a tired horse running for safety
drag them by the hips and move faster
you do not have the privilege to rest
in a country that wants to spit you out
you have to keep
going and going
and going
till you reach the water
hand over everything in your name
for a ticket onto the boat
next to a hundred others like you
packed like sardines
you tell the woman beside you
this boat is not strong enough to carry
this much sorrow to a shore
what does it matter she says
if drowning is easier than staying
how many people has this water drunk up
is it all one long cemetery
bodies buried without a country
perhaps the sea is your country
perhaps the boat sinks
because it is the only place that will take you
- boat
what if we get to their doors
and they slam them shut i ask
what are doors she says
when we’ve escaped the belly of the beast
borders
are man-made
they only divide us physically
don’t let them make us
turn on each other
- we are not enemies
after the surgery
she tells me
how bizarre it is
that they just took out
the first home of her children
- hysterectomy february 2016
bombs brought entire cities
down to their knees today
refugees boarded boats knowing
their feet may never touch land again
police shot people dead for the color of their skin
last month i visited an orphanage of
abandoned babies left on the curbside like waste
later at the hospital i watched a mother
lose both her child and her mind
somewhere a lover died
how can i refuse to believe
my life is anything short of a miracle
if amidst all this chaos
i was given this life
- circumstances
perhaps we are all immigrants
trading one home for another
first we leave the womb for air
then the suburbs for the filthy city
in search of a better life
some of us just happen to leave entire countries
my god
is not waiting inside a church
or sitting above the temple’s steps
my god
is the refugee’s breath as she’s running
is living in the starving child’s belly
is the heartbeat of the protest
my god
does not rest between pages
written by holy men
my god
lives between the sweaty thighs
of women’s bodies sold for money
was last seen washing the homeless man’s feet
my god
is not as unreachable as
they’d like you to think
my god is beating inside us infinitely
advice i would’ve given
my mother on her wedding day
in a dream
i saw my mother
with the love of her life
and no children
it was the happiest i’d ever seen her
- what if
you split the world
into pieces and
called them countries
declared ownership on
what never belonged to you
and left the rest with nothing
- colonize
my parents never sat us down in the evenings to share stories of their younger days. one was always working. the other too tired. perhaps being an immigrant does that to you.
the cold terrain of the north engulfed them. their bodies were hard at work paying in blood and sweat for their citizenship. perhaps the weight of the new world was too much. and the pain and sorrow of the old was better left buried.
i do wish i had unburied it though. i wish i’d pried their silence apart like a closed envelope. i wish i’d found a small opening at its very edge. pushed a finger inside and gently torn it open. they had an entire life before me which i am a stranger to. it would be my greatest regret to see them leave this place before i even got to know them.
my voice
is the offspring
of two countries colliding
what is there to be ashamed of
if english
and my mother tongue
made love
my voice
is her father’s words
and mother’s accent
what does it matter if
my mouth carries two worlds
- accent
for years they were separated by oceans
left with nothing but little photographs of each other
smaller than passport-size photos
hers was tucked into a golden locket
his slipped inside his wallet
at the end of the day
when their worlds went quiet
studying them was their only intimacy
this was a time long before computers
when families in that part of the world
had not seen a telephone or laid their
almond eyes on a colored television screen
long before you and i
as the wheels of the plane touched tarmac
she wondered if this was the place
had she boarded the right flight
should’ve asked the air hostess twice
like her husband suggested
walking into baggage claim
her heart beat so heavy
she thought it might fall out
eyes darting in every direction
searching for what to do next when
suddenly
right there
in the flesh
he stood
not a mirage—a man
first came relief
then bewilderment
they’d imagined this reunion for years
had rehearsed their lines
but her mouth seemed to forget
she felt a kick in her stomach
when she saw the shadows circling his eyes
and shoulders carrying an invisible weight
it looked like the life had been drained out of him
where was the person she had wed
she wondered
reaching for the golden locket
the one with the photo of the man
her husband did not look like anymore
- the new world had drained him
what if
there isn’t enough time
to give her what she deserves
do you think
if i begged the sky hard enough
my mother’s soul would
return to me as my daughter
so i can give her
the comfort she gave me
my whole life
i want to go back in time and sit beside her. document her in a home movie so my eyes can spend the rest of their lives witnessing a miracle. the one whose life i never think of before mine. i want to know what she laughed about with friends. in the village within houses of mud and brick. surrounded by acres of mustard plant and sugarcane. i want to sit with the teenage version of my mother. ask about her dreams. become her pleated braid. the black kohl caressing her eyelids. the flour neatly packed into her fingertips. a page in her schoolbooks. even to be a single thread of her cotton dress would be the greatest gift.
- to witness a miracle
1790
he takes the newborn girl from his wife
carries her to the neighboring room
cradles her head with his left hand
and gently snaps her neck with his right
1890
a wet towel to wrap her in
grains of rice and
sand in the nose
a mother shares the trick with her daughter-in-law
i had to do it she says
as did my mother
and her mother before her
1990
a newspaper article reads
a hundred baby girls were found buried
behind a doctor’s house in a neighboring village
the wife wonders if that’s where he took her
she imagines her daughter becoming the soil
fertilizing the roots that feed this country
1998
oceans away in a toronto basement
a doctor performs an illegal abortion
on an indian woman who already has a daughter
one is burden enough she says
2006
it’s easier than you think my aunties tell my mother
they know a family
who’ve done it three times
they know a clinic. they could get mumma the number.
the doctor even prescribes pills that guarantee a boy.
they worked for the woman down the street they say
now she has three sons
2012
twelve hospitals in the toronto area
refuse to reveal a baby’s gender to expecting families
until the thirtieth week of pregnancy
all twelve hospitals are located in areas with high south asian immigrant populations
- female infanticide | female feticide
remember the body
of your community
breathe in the people
who sewed you whole
it is you who became yourself
but those before you
are a part of your fabric
- honor the roots
when they buried me alive
i dug my way
out of the ground
with palm and fist
i howled so loud
the earth rose in fear and
the dirt began to levitate
my whole life has been an uprising
one burial after another
- i will find my way out of you just fine
my mother sacrificed her dreams
so i could dream
broken english
i think about the way my father
pulled the family out of poverty
without knowing what a vowel was
and my mother raised four children
without being able to construct
a perfect sentence in english
a discombobulated couple
who landed in the new world with hopes
that left the bitter taste of rejection in their mouths
no family
no friends
just man and wife
two university degrees that meant nothing
one mother tongue that was broken now
one swollen belly with a baby inside
a father worrying about jobs and rent
cause no matter what this baby was coming
and they thought to themselves for a split second
was it worth it to put all of our money
into the dream of a country
that is swallowing us whole
papa looks at his woman’s eyes
and sees loneliness living where the iris was
wants to give her a home in a country that looks at her
with the word visitor wrapped around its tongue
on their wedding day
she left an entire village to be his wife
now she left an entire country to be a warrior
and when the winter came
they had nothing but the heat of their own bodies
to keep the coldness out
like two brackets they faced one another
to hold the dearest parts of them—their children—close
they turned a suitcase full of clothes into a life
and regular paychecks
to make sure the children of immigrants
wouldn’t hate them for being the children of immigrants
they worked too hard
you can tell by their hands
their eyes are begging for sleep
but our mouths were begging to be fed
and that is the most artistic thing i have ever seen
it is poetry to these ears
that have never heard what passion sounds like
and my mouth is full of likes and ums when
i look at their masterpiece
cause there are no words in the english language
that can articulate that kind of beauty
i can’t compact their existence into twenty-six letters and call it a description
i tried once
but the adjectives needed to describe them
don’t even exist
so instead i ended up with pages and pages
full of words followed by commas and
more words and more commas
only to realize there are some things
in the world so infinite
they could never use a full stop
so how dare you mock your mother
when she opens her mouth and
broken english spills out
don’t be ashamed of the fact that
she split through countries to be here
so you wouldn’t have to cross a shoreline
her accent is thick like honey
hold it with your life
it’s the only thing she has left of home
don’t you stomp on that richness
instead hang it up on the walls of museums
next to dali and van gogh
her life is brilliant and tragic
kiss the side of her tender cheek
she already knows what it feels like
to have an entire nation laugh when she speaks
she is more than our punctuation and language
we might be able to paint pictures and write stories
but she made an entire world for herself
how is that for art
