By: Naazneen Diwan
The Drum and the Violin
What drumming called
my curves to your bamboo hands?
What fissures in oblivion
entranced our lineages
to lay down?
Here. Now. Semi-solid.
Between midnight
poltergeists. String accompanists.
Pocketing shooting stars.
What thickness is
stretched translucent
over steel frames?
I dare you to strike
me with the softest
part of your open palm.
Dha Dhin Dhin Dha
Dha Dhin Dhin Dha
Dha Tin Tin Ta
Ta Dhin Dhin Dha
I promise
I’ll preserve
your drying hides
with my cries.
And accept
there will be more.
More rhythm.
More surface.
More out of sync
lovers with bowstrings
snapped in half.
Naseeb
I collect
my destiny:
fragments of
misplaced earth
and sky.
I collect
a conspiracy:
skin and
carcass
of beings
with deeper roots
than I've known.
I collect
love known:
I squeeze
the shells of
severed synthesis
wondering how
eternal
their watering.
I collect
my wake:
entrails of tactile
teachings
always both.
Both supple
and shriveled.
Both soft belly
and hardened
magma cover.
I collect
the bark of trees
in limbo, begging
release.
I become
a taxidermist
and revive their
life with my hands.
Understanding
my fate
is to break down and
apart
to fall
lose my way
scrape and bruise
as I tumble
be torn
from everything
I know as home --
be a lesson
in my undoing.
I am less and lighter
than tree bark;
dangling in mid-air
will soon make way
for descent.
Centipedes and Other Childhood Demons
I don't have to dig
for these secrets;
they wedge themselves
into damp cracks
beside me.
This festering nursery
for poems;
so far from the sun
I forget grace
has many forms.
I steady the weight
of this world
across 100 legs,
brace witness against
the most repulsive touch.
His predatory fangs
lift and seize.
Slow poison
quickening her
nervous system for
a lifetime.
I am no longer
the most frightening thing.
Could I weave her
a silk pillow to protect
her from future nightmares?
Or journey with her
to warmer days?
Where life exists
eventually.
I let drop
the insect from my grip
choose to gently starve until
we can share a dream
of solitude
together.
Or until
I use phantom
shadows to become
a scorpion and avenge
her childhood at last.
Naazneen Diwan is a queer, Muslim poet and social justice educator. She is the current Lead Instructor for Baldwin House Urban Writing Residency hosted by Twelve Literary Arts in Cleveland, Ohio. She is an alumni of Art Omi writers' residency and the founder of Kalaashakti healing arts and meditation workshops with Muslim women. Her poems have been published in several publications, including Kohl, Project As[I]Am, SAMAR, and MOONROOT, and have been performed in venues such as Tuesday Night Cafe, The Japanese American National Museum in LA, Khmer Arts Academy, Other Books and The Last Bookstore. She has forthcoming pieces in Sky Island Journal and The Yale Review. Her poetry manuscript, 99 Names, was also a University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Prize Semi-Finalist. She will be presenting on a panel entitled, “Teaching Embodied Poetry to Diverse Communities,” at this year’s AWP.
"I often create portable altars out of found objects when I am writing remotely. And as a writer without a 9-5 or office space, I am usually writing remotely. While writing 'Naseeb,' which is Arabic in origin but used in many languages and means fate, I had picked up some tree bark and a few yellowing leaves during my walk to my coffee shop/office for the day. In looking closely at a microcosm of the universe, 'Naseeb' is about death, annihilation, and liberation. 'The Drum and the Violin' came about from discordant and frictious lovership. In it, fantasy rubs against the coarseness of reality as two people seeking affection and connection find, instead, mismatching needs and crashing expectations. I have played the viola and violin since Middle School and I was paired, however briefly, with the drum in life and in this poem. I teach a creative writing residency called Baldwin House for the organization, Twelve Literary Arts. As I entered my first run of the 8-week experience, I thought about assigning the first writing prompt as taking a different perspective. And then, as I started my morning journaling, memories of my childhood basement and the sexual abuse that occurred there secretly, appeared. And the image of this scary basement with all sorts of creatures and centipedes thriving and crawling out of every crack came to me, so I thought, why not ask them (and myself) to take the unlovable perspective. That is how 'Centipedes and Other Childhood Demons' was born. "