PARTITION HOMES, BY SNEHA SUBRAMANIAN KANTA |
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(i) Exile begins in the throat. A lost body. A forgotten horizon or the shield of stars. Ventricular. A harpsichord with ocean, sand, and salt. The checkpoint of fog— mossgreen scapula. A winter of absence trucks lined in Rawalpindi boats set off the shore beside a dawning Jhelum. (ii) Exile begins in the throat. An arrival. How many words do I know for hunger? What is the nestling space between two countries of conflict called? What is the name of basil or the hinterland hills or the city where my grandmother first embraced tenderness without speaking of it? Again the roaring winds across a tarpaulin. Again another river charcoaling at night. You dream in three languages, at least one of them despair. (iii) Exile begins in the throat. A departure. The call of a cliff or a gutter-stream. Filament flourish, a violet pattern synecdoche. My grandmother left a home sailing across two countries. A silent floating accompanies the whirr of a ship. These may be fangs, or a dagger. Hinge. The soft gauze. A day of massacre. (iv) Exile begins in the throat. A lost body. Famished sky of vapor clouds. An assembly vortex. The trees fraction into half. Where will you grow thickness if not into the landscape? Remember. A family. Two daughters. Four sons. Partition. Welt. Ship. Rising tides. |
Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from Canada. She has been awarded the first Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019. She is a recipient of The Charles Wallace Fellowship (2018-19) at The University of Stirling. She has been awarded the GREAT scholarship and earned a second postgraduate degree in literature from The University of Plymouth. She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal and reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal.