Two of Rupam Baoni’s poems featured in the poetry anthology “Invisible Borders, New Women’s Writing from Cornwall”, an anthology of poems and writings.
Edited by Linda Cleary
Published: Hypatia Publications September 2020
It is a collection of writing from 23 women writers with poetry and stories that take you on a journey through Cornwall and beyond, inspired by this westernmost wilderness and its coastline, whilst also reaching outward to cities and places far from its shores in a rich map of fresh writing.
Featuring the work of: Jacky Garratt, Vivienne Tregenza, Benigale Richards, Laura Sennen, Lucia Johns, Mary Charnley, Faye Wilson, Diana Dixon, Jude Brickhill, Rupam Baoni, Vicki Morley, Mary Oliver, Lou Sarabadzic, Katrina Naomi, Penelope Shuttle, Abigail Elizabeth Ottley, Alice Kavounas, Pascale Petit, Natasha Carthew, Katherine Stansfield, Linda Cleary, Lesley Hale and Ella Frears.
anonymous
yes, I dropped here from the land of
noise and monochrome, back there every-
thing was magnified to Hermon,
Wadi Hajar, al-Assad and the rest, I’m
anonymous; once we ate mud, ashes and
mortar, lived in houses baked to bronze and
char black, we carried pailfuls back and
forth from trenches spewing flame, gunge and
human blood; once I was swallowed whole
then regurgitated back to living again and things
moved on as before; once I was torn limb
for limb, head, torso, groins, then sewn back to
a piece, misshapen and make-do; once
evenings had the children hanging on by
a thread to tales of honey-baklava, za’atar, or
salvers of kibbeh bil-saniyeh, growing aches in
the underbelly, mounting shrieks outside of
our nights, the tears were gravel, the eyes stoned
upon the sea of no-return; once I was
born and killed in utero for I didn’t know then
nor will, the secrets of birthing and of
death; yes, I am here now in my 206 or so
scraps and strips, my wedges of flesh, my skin,
my spleen, the three leftover faces that I call home
~~
audio
dads, playoffs & sherry trifle
the widest distance between the thumb and
forefinger – that’s how far removed I grow with
or without you now; it’s all a matter of
puttying the odd crevice onto the strips of those
otherwise evenly painted walls I’m told, and we
could be family again; remember the warmness of
our summer afternoons, wet like the underside of a
tongue whose bloody pinks have blended to pale onyx
now? that’s the span of time between child and
adulthood; and that’s not enough anyhow to wipe out
those creases in a relation now suffixed with the
quintessential ship to it; yes, affixes never last; they
weren’t meant to, nor were roots and root words; they
alter, reinvent themselves, slip to posterity; we weren’t
meant to either; our love was sherry trifle and
crumble when it was and now it eats into us, starting
from head down to the far extremities; we’ll never
shoulder it together to the final eulogies and back, just
as we never did to any back then when I’d waited up
there at the podiums, charged with anticipation and the
promise of many arrivals; yes, mum always did
say I was a trader of emotions, didn’t she? she had hip
replacement last autumn after those ectomies; and she
said she loved the rustle of footsteps up the drive and that
her body reminded her of failure
~~
audio
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