PRATIK SOUTH ASIA SPECIAL : Indian Poet ASHWANI KUMAR's "Secret History of Silk Routes"

 

ASHWANI KUMAR

Secret History of Silk Routes

 

When I travel

I leave my eyes in the corner of my home in Susa-

They make the journeys difficult.

In my stories,

There is truth and falsehood alike;

Foxes are symbol of collateral love and

Cranes are atheists from our folk tales.

 

With an army of stone soldiers, exiled poets,

And rogue traders, we go down crooked, perilous

Roads of memories,

Buying and selling cruelties of nations along the way.

Most days were yellow and dusty, but

Often, the sky in Gobi Desert was sliver green as in Aleppo.

 

All summer, all winter, we walked with greed and grief

Searching for burnt emeralds and

Thin arrowroot biscuits for Buddhist

Monks in Kublai Khan’s court.

When we reached the city of Shandu, we saw

Upon a colonnade of handsome pillars, 

Corpses of newly married young men and women

 

Hanging together, whispering, counselling each other

Against using unlicensed spices from Indus.

There were no frontiers between

Madness and non-madness. A perpetual

Unfettering of desires to become travelling

Gods led us from one city to another-

Selling picture postcards of savage Samarkand cliffs.

 

Slowly, we became accustomed to ancient habits-

Petty haggling over occult mysteries of War and

Peace in the bazars of Kinsai. 

Now, you can imagine why

We could not fault our austere mules

Flirting with dragons with five- claws in cold Mogao caves.

 

When we arrived at the noisy roadside taverns

Heavy-breasted dancing girls 

Refused to serve us sumptuous meals;

They were so fed up with sleeping and slimming pills that

They had turned carnivorous in

Good times and hermits in hard times.

By the time we realized

They were obsessed with the perfume of freedom

We had abandoned them to rebels,

Camouflaged in militia uniforms.

 

With all my spoils of fish and flesh

I return home

find a snake hiding in the eyelids of my

Abyssinian slave mother,

vaccinated against the poison of silk worms.

I kiss her forehead, confess my sins, and

Watch happily my Mangolian dog Pelle

Chasing frightened gazelle on the shores of Tigris.

 

 

 

 

@ Names of cities used in the poems are taken from Travels of Marco Polo by Rustichello da Pisa

 

Ashwani Kumar is a poet, writer, and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences. His major poetryanthologies are My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter and Banaras and the Other first of a trilogy onreligious cities. Widely published and translated into several Indian languages, his poems are noted for ‘lyricalcelebration’ of garbled voices of memory and subversive ‘whimsy’ quality. Recently, a collection of his selectpoems titled Architecture of Alphabets has been published in Hungarian. He is also author of Community Warriors, and one of the chief editors of Global Civil Society’@ London School of Economics. He is co-founder of IndianNovels Collective for translation of classic novels from Indian languages, and writes a regular book column in the Financial Express.

 

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Pratik Noir Issue Highlight: American poet DAVID LEHMAN's "The Double Agent: A Screenplay for Michael Caine"

 

DAVID LEHMAN

The Double Agent:

A Screenplay for Michael Caine

 

1.

It was going to snow and then it didn't snow.

He loved her like a dying man's last cigarette.

 

2.

The dog was planning his next betrayal.

It was, he reasoned, in the nature of dogs

to betray their bitches. The man at the bar

was wearing a dark suit and tie as thin

as the excuses given by an unfaithful mate

to her homicidal husband on the phone.

 

3.

“You want results, you have to pay for them.”

“All right, but are you sure this is the guy?”

“This is the guy.” And in he walked, wearing

eyeglasses and speaking with a Cockney accent.

He had made his bones when he killed his wife

with a lightbulb in the cellar, made it look like

an accident, got away with it, and celebrated

by pushing a man in front of a speeding train.

 

4.

The assignment was to convey a private message

by public means, as in the headline of a news story

of seeming insignificance whose secret meaning

only his London controller would understand. 

 

5.

The dog was dead. That was the message.

 

6.

Lights out. His name on a list. And beside

his name, a sum: fifty thousand dollars.

They had lied to him, put his life in danger,

only to test him. Yet he delivered, though

it meant he had to cross from West to East

Berlin and back in the back of a hearse

in a dark tunnel, a live body inside.

 

7.

In that second, he had to make up his mind:

was he bluffing, or would he pull the trigger?

“Three men have been killed for those papers,”

the chief barked, indignant at the cost

of this little operation. “Sorry, boss.”

The agent held up four fingers.

The chief crushed his cigar. “Four!”

 

8.

“Enlighten me, Mr. Lane, if that is indeed your name.

Why didn't you leave at once when you could?”

“Loyalty,” he replied with sarcasm so thick

you could be sure he was carrying a false passport.

 

9.

The man reading the paper in the hotel lobby

heard every word. There was a short silence.

Suddenly he put the paper down.

“I am the stranger of whom you speak,” he said

in the formal English of a Spaniard

in a Hemingway novel. That was the tip-off.

 

10.

Even the girl was a ruse.

Only the money was real.

 

11.

He could see it from the balcony:

freedom; there it was, across the river,

in the brown haze of dusk:

a row of dead birches like the bars of a gate

with blue water and green hills behind it.

 

12.

Was it worth it? You didn't ask yourself.

You just grabbed your case and went.

You didn't even know the date, the month

and year, until you got there. Afterwards,

if you were lucky, there would be time

to remember. Well, he would have to do

the remembering for the whole unit. And once

a year, in a hotel room in Switzerland,

he would take out the girl’s photograph

and shake his head.

 

 

Born and raised in New York City, American poet David Lehman is Series Editor of The Best American Poetry anthology. He is the author of The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir. In 2019, he and Suzanne Lummis engaged in a season of exchanges on noir for The Best American Poetry blog, for example: https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2019/08/the-images-of-noir-by-david-lehman-and-suzanne-lummis.html

 

 

 

 

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Pratik's Noir Issue Guest Editorial : SUZANNE LUMMIS -- Darkness in Style : Introduction to Noir

 

SUZANNE LUMMIS

Darkness in Style

Introduction to Noir

 

Noir—it’s a style, usually spare, devoid of sentiment, pity, especially self-pity. It’s atmosphere, a mood, with hints of transgression in the air, and maybe the scent of burning cigarettes, classic era Camels or Lucky Strikes, pre-Surgeon General’s Warning. And the subject? Crime. If no crime’s in progress, recent or eminent, then some sense of danger will do, unease. If no specific danger, then a sense of inevitable failure will do. 

In this exploration of noir, I’ve made a few choices that push the definition to its outermost. Lawrence Raab’s poem “Why It Always Rains in the Movies,” and the late C. Natale Peditto’s memoir of Philadelphia in the 50s, early 60s, are as free of violence and mayhem as a thing can be but still be noir. Lynne Thompson’s recollection of two murdered women is as close to a social justice poem as a thing can be and still be noir. (In fact, it straddles both sensibilities, and were it to appear in an anthology of social justice poems the editor might note that “The Ways of Remembering Women” is as close to noir as a thing can be and still be a social justice poem.)  Virgil Suárez’s “The Lion Head Belt Buckle” speaks in a language as relaxed and natural as it can be and still…  Well, you get the idea.

And all along I’ve had reservations about this realm that’s absorbed me for some decades. Film noir festivals, private eye and crime-story fast-reads, book series gathering short fiction set in various cities, Brooklyn Noir, Boston Noir, Bagdad Noir… just to name a few of the “B”s. It sounds like fun. It’s not. In life it’s not. When you yourself are the victim of violence, or someone close to you is, the entertainment value drops precipitously. Both Christina Cha’s shattering non-fiction piece and—though technically it be fiction—Lou Mathews’ story, remind us of the darkest side of the darkest art—the real-world side. 

Then, there’s the smack-on, straight up noir style, many examples here, such as Kim Addonizio’s fiction, “The Wishing Well”— note the abbreviated voice, telegraphic speed, sentences that seem shot from a handgun. 

Ironically, paradoxically, I end this anthology of crimes or reflections on crime, true or imagined, on film or in poetry, with dancing. The word dancing. Noir loves paradox— so does poetry. My students have heard me avow it: Poetry loves paradox.

That’s where I end, but I begin with a premonition of doom. That’d be another Lawrence Raab poem. And with truth. You bet I do—feels like truth to me, though I have no ties to espionage or jewel heists, or whatever game the speaker’s cast his dice in. And I have never eyed a bullet in midair heading my way. However, certain days, certain hours of certain days, I’ve felt something of what the speaker expresses. 

I dedicate this assortment of noir writings to those who have ever, for a moment or two, or many, felt a wee bit doomed, so that they’ll know they’re not alone. And, I dedicate it to those who’ve never in their lives had such a notion, so that they can consider—once again—how lucky they are. 

 

 

American poet Suzanne Lummis has been variously associated with The Fresno Poets, the Stand-Up Poets—a Los Angeles based uprising in the 90s that allowed for irreverence and a performance-driven version of literary poetry—and poetry noir, both the writing and defining of it. Poetry.la produces her web series on film noir and contemporary poetry, They Write by Night. She is the editor of The Pacific Coast Poetry Series (imprint of Beyond Baroque Books), and editor of the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Another Chicago Magazine and elsewhere, and her poems in Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Plume, New Ohio Review, The New Yorker, etc. She has published three poetry collections; her plays have been produced in three cities; she’s taught through the UCLA Extension Writers Program for some decades; she was a 2018/19 COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellow; she viewed the Great Sphinx of Tanis in the Louvre when she was five—or so she’s been told.

 

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Pratik Current Noir Issue Highlight: Celebrated American poet Yusef Komunyakaa's The Cage Walker

 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

The Cage Walker

Photo credit: Nancy Crampton

He shoves the .38

into his coat pocket

& walks back into

the dark. Night

takes him like a conveyer belt.

For a split second

he’s been there

in the ditch,

hood pulled from over a death’s-head.

He sits on a park bench.

Blue uniform behind every elm,

night sticks. He thinks how a man

enters the deeper, darker machine.

His fingers touch gun metal.

He stands & walks down

toward the wharf; ships rock

in white foghorn silence.

Water slams, steel doors

closing in a tunnel.

The quarter-moon goes blank

behind a cloud. He frames a picture

in his head, retraces footsteps

to Shorty’s Liquor Store.

He will go in this time.

He stands under a street lamp.

Moths float by

& he counts cars:

1, 2,3, 4, 5, aw shit.

A woman walks past & smiles.

Her red dress turns the corner

like blood in a man’s eyes.

He stares at his hands.

They say August is a good time

for a man to go crazy.  

Yusef Komunyakaa’s honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, The Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the William Faulkner Prize from the Université de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Neon Vernacular. He has named his most important poetic influences as Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman.  

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Pratik: Darkness in Style, The Noir Issue, Vol XIX No 4

Pratik: Darkness in Style

 The Noir Issue

Vol XIX No 4 

Edited by Yuyutsu Sharma

Guesr Editor : Suzanne Lummis 

POETRY

Yusef Komunyakaa 

Dorianne Laux 

Lynne Thompson 

Elya Braden 

Tony Barnstone 

Mehnaz Sahibzada

Lynn Emanuel 

David Lehman 

Tim Seibles

Marilyn Robertson 

Carol Ellis 

Tanya Ko Hong 

Eric Priestley 

Peggy Dobreer 

Charles Harper Webb 

Cece Peri 

David Lazar 

Tim Seibles 

Alison Turner 

Nicholas Christopher 

Suzanne Lummis 

Susan Aizenberg 

John Allman 

John Challis 

Alexis Rhone Fancher 

Marilyn Robertson 

David Lazar 

Lawrence Raab 

Susan Aizenberg 

Virgil Suárez 

John Allman 

FICTION & NON-FICTION 

Kim Addonizio 

Lou Mathews 

C. Natale Peditto 

Wiktoria Klera 

Suzanne Lummis 

Christina Cha 

NOIR ART  Plus all regular Columns

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EDITORIAL : Pratik's Special Australian Issue

 

EDITORIAL

Pratik's Special Australian Issue

 

Welcome to the Australian edition of the international, Nepal-based magazine, Pratik. Fire and Rain is brought to you by a partnership between Pratik, Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT), and Red Room Poetry. We are very pleased indeed to present a collection of diverse and exciting writers to the international stage, and to present the issue at several venues, including the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in October 2023, the Nepal Launch at Australian Embassy, Kathmandu on 11 January, 2024 and the Indian launches at ILFK, Kerala and New Delhi World Book Fair, in February, 2024.

Looking over this collection as a whole, there is a sense of anxiety, a precarity, about relationships with both the natural and urban worlds. Two dominant themes emerge: that of the violent and of the tender. From the linguistic dexterity of Dan Disney’s Unentitled, where a fractured colonised presence emerges as paper-thin, to the deftly controlled rage of Bebe Backhouse’s impressive i want to know what you did with my memories, we can observe intimations of violence signalling a tragic colonial disquiet, a disquiet explosively pursued in Christopher Raja’s story Red, a heartbreaking account of a massacre of indigenous people. This dominant trope of violence appears in another guise in Gay Lynch’s In-Train, where family violence hovers over the story like a chilling dark cloud.

Just as violence is shown in these pieces to manifest in various forms, the theme of the tender is defined within subtle differences. Stephanie Green’s Disruption, a moving tribute to a lost friend, weaves a sense of time past with a lyrical sweep through time, location, and event. Mags Webster’s linguistically deft poem Salt & Sulphur brings speaker and oyster together in compelling imagery, while Jill Jones’ Testament is exemplary of her customary gift in bringing forth the imminent, being of and not of nature in its abstract glory. Annie Te Whiu’s sensitive response to the natural world and ancestral memory in angled is echoed in Alison Barton’s attentive evocation of the natural world, implying more than it states, in How to grieve in the open air. While to conclude, Jude Aquilina’s Heat Wave, Koolunga reminds us of the environmental damage wrecked upon this country by the colonial practice of Terraforming, as country currently used for grazing sheep bakes in an unrelenting sun.

Finally, we would like to thank Her Excellency, the Australian Ambassador to Nepal, Felicity Volk, for her engagement in this project, and the Australia Council for The Arts for their generous support.

 

– Yuyutsu Sharma, Sally Breen & Jennifer Mackenzie,

Editors

 

 

 

 

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Kathmandu Launch of Pratik Magazine's Special Australian Issue

 

KATHMANDU LAUNCH

Her Excellency Ms. Felicity Volk,

the Australian Ambassador 

looks forward to hosting you at the launch of

Fire and Rain

Special Australian Issue of Pratik Magazine

Edited by Yuyutsu Sharma with

 Sally Breen & Jennifer Mackenzie as Guest Editors

Date: Thursday, 11 Jan 2024

Time: 3 pm

Venue:  The Australian Embassy, Kathmandu, Nepal

Entrance by Invitation Only

To confirm invitation, write to

whitelotusbookshop@gmail.com or call 9803171925