by Niranjan
This poetry is part of the special series "Through the Light Holes" in collaboration with Myanmar Photo Archive.
86 ways I could use a knife (or, how I had seen a knife used, once).
Cutting apart
A clove
Of Ginger
Whittling it down
Discarding the skin
A mound
Knife
back-handed
Held to off
With thumb
Upon hilt (blade’s dull back)
No one had ever bled.
Using it-
He tried
To teach
Me
The way-
I forgot-
Instantly-
His name-
Tin Shwe-
A malli-
A coolie-
Chief-Cook’s son.
Died
of
an asshole
Bleeding-
Buckets.
The razor
Slit
Hands had cut
The turtling (protruding) rectum
Clean.
I had longed for
to see that man
to see him again.
Now,
I wonder
If he does.
My grandmother
Taught me
The full frontal
Push against
the hand
holding the clove
Evading
She often
bled.
Had
Nine
Children
Raised
Under
her
Hand.
I hope
to have seven more.
Just for
Just for more
Just for.
I want
for
more.
Where
Will
I find
The one
or ones
to have them?
I
will
not.
I have
Seen
A rusted blade
Cut Apart
A Dog’s
Balls.
Maybe
I should
Just
Put
It
Upon
Me
Where
It doesn’t bleed.
The dog
Was screeching
Why did we?
My grandfather
Promenaded
Through
The hospital
gardens
with his extra honey (his side moon)
Who was
his cousin too
While his wife
My grandmother
had
her fifth or sixth
Child
It might’ve been
A boy
That time-
They had
Always
Cherished
Their boys
But their
Daughters
helped/loved them
more.
My father
was the second
their first son.
I am
their first son’s
first son.
Their
first
grandson.
I am
also
Cherished
By them
All
But, I should be
(Wished
that
I would’ve been)
Bleeding
For
I had
Bled them
ill
They had
depended upon me.
Bled
And died
A worser
Ailment.
I am
Their suffrage.
While, my sisters
Had saved me
My Aunts had
Saved me
My grandmother
Had
Saved me
And saved me
And saved me.
I would not
Save me.
Nobody,
Should
Or could
Can I?
I can’t
Can I?
Why, try?
I had
Bled
one time
When
An Aluminum can’s
Flipped up cover
I had grabbed-
Or maybe
I wrongfully
A tribute
Again
It was her
The Old one
My grandma
Grabbed it from
My younger sibling
Sister
She was playful
(I love her)
She was
Cruel
My grandmother
Cut her
Index, up
A second mark
Once
It went through
A machine
Cleaver
Lost whole
The tip of
Her finger
With yellow turmeric
Held together
Till her death
Had altered
Sight tilted
To her right
Hand
To her all end.
I am
of
Her end.
An ever
Fast
Forwarding.
I try
And celebrate
Here
Their pain
more
And living.
I’m living
they are deceased
I am
Free
to be
what they weren’t?
But what they were
was not
the worst
We could ever
Become
But no
It is not
for me
for us.
I want
to have
sixteen children
Not for kids (sons or daughters)
or
For Lust
But Because
I want of ours
to be
And to be
as happily
As they live on
Happy
With a family
table
Long
No one
Cold
or left off
But all
Together
And one
And all.
To live alone
With someone(s)
And be (it) with them all
All the abilities
And possibilities
And needs with
And off in the world
A likeness
A-like
In the world
In our world
And have of it ours
Children (Brethren)
Of sixteen
minds, and shades and colors.
My grandmother had 13 (siblings)
Her mother had fifteen
Hers’ had 20.
I want with
for ours
the best living.
They had
Never
Except for my grandmother
And maybe hers’
Her mother
Completely suffered
Her husband
Died
When
She was
twelve
or nine
Or, maybe
It was
sixteen
I lied
She had
A son
Aba
Ne Win
Who died
At seventy-five
A naming-After
of the unfortunate
Kind
too late
to change it.
A name
sticks
he died as Aba Ne Win.
His father
was
A muslim.
An, Arakan
I believe
or, I’m
Lying
once
Again.
We are only
four
a lonely number.
My grandmother’s
Mother
had 3, including her, surviving out of fifteen
The war
Ate them
And, spit them back
As Spittle
Red
And little
And soulless
Beetle nut, juice chewed
Over, excess.
Ruby red:
(The Jap’s bayonet’s blade
Cut through a man’s guts
and the coils spilled, rolling ruby smears-red.
To the dirt
they are discarded
the food for vultures/crows and insects.
But a child’s broken
Umbilical
is kept
And kept,
As dried and cherished
My great uncle’s
Aba’s was
A king, he should’ve been
As suggested, by the strangeness of the coils
A holster, diagonally, crossed over
twice
but the mask, and the cord
Were lost, in a fire
he saved an old Chinese woman
whose feet had been bound. They had, cut her, off. Our photos too, gone.
A thin, slicing, of bamboo
Paper, dilute
the lips, the vulva, cut through
To bleed through
A child’s head
blue
Birthed.
I wonder,
of such now
Rogue old
treatments
my great, grandmother
suffered for
her
thirteen, children
Who would now, (or know)
who’d need to, or should be asked to
to suffer for, with, a surgical sword
A mother.
(No surprise,
If, the rogue old, methods
Still, at present, flowers. Especially now, they’ve fled, the gowns, or are captured, clowns.))
Her lips
Were then
My lips
Are now
Our lips
Are down.
The razor/scissors
to slice through
the baby’s sickle, sinew, pinkish-cord, of life
I,
just want
sixteen of mine
Out of
fifteen
twelve
Had died
Only
three
Survived
I want
All mine’s
Alive
Alive
Alive.
I want
All mine’s
Alive.
Out of thirteen
My grandmother’s
Only seven survive.
The war’s
a ravaging
of time’s.
The bayonet’s
Slide
our
Cut through
eye.
I am maligned.
The blade
cuts through
Our lives.
I’m waiting
for
mine.
I’m waiting
for
mine.
I’m waiting
For
Mine.
Mine
Mine
Mine
The blade
through
the knife.
Cut, through
My, Our
Life, lives.
All Her Children’s Survived.
23.6.2022
About the poet:
Niranjan was born in Mandalay, Burma, and he is twenty one years old. He went to study at a Hong Kong University abroad, but promptly returned home after dropping out in his second year. He has only been published twice, once at a foreign quarterly press known as Wilderness House Review, and secondly for a poetry competition at the University mentioned above wherein he received the first-prize. He only wishes to be remembered under a good name.