MANUSCRIPT POETRY OUT LOUD

Search For My Tongue By

Sujata Bhatt

You ask me what I mean

by saying I have lost my tongue.
I ask you, what would you do
if you had two tongues in your mouth,
and lost the first one,
the mother tongue,
and could not really know the other,
the foreign tongue.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that way.
And if you lived in a place you had to
speak a foreign tongue,
your mother tongue would rot,
rot and die in your mouth
until you had to spit it out.
 I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,
it grows back, a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots, the bud opens,
the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I've forgotten,
I think I've lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
 Persimmons
By Li-Young Lee
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down.
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.
Naked: I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo: you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
 a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up
so everyone could taste a
Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,

forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.
He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,

the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.
 The Colour of Race By
Jennifer Wong

It bothers me, this feeling of trespassing,

taking certain bus routes
from Walthamstow, from Elephant and Castle.

Their colourful clothes, their dreadlocks, the

curiosity in that young boy's stare, his white
teeth when he smiles.

I catch one white woman saying to another, "I

wouldn't like my children growing up here.
It's so . . . multicultural."

What makes her look away? Why does she tremble? Who
are those in parka jackets, waiting in the darkness for the
first bus in Hounslow, in Tooting, in Oval?

Baristas. Cleaners. Bus drivers. Sales assistants.

Lives measured in shifts and toilet breaks, happiness
in the annual leave they take.

What about that man in the local

chicken shop? He's been frying drumsticks for
years and years. Does he ever speak?

I know who that Chinese girl is outside

Canary Wharf station, handing leaflets
to passers-by, on a weekend, for a few quid.

She studies management by day

and in the evening swipes meats and fruits at
the counter, but she'd stoop for any

job in this country, if it means she can stay.

Why does the Uber driver tell me his
story? He works seven days a week,

has never been to the theatre. In

Pakistan, his father is dying.
He's saving every penny for his children.

Nothing you can't buy with money. He smiles.

The cab passes slowly through the streets in
Chelsea, disappears into the traffic.
 Border Love By
Merlinda Bobis

Right after my long flight,

I wore it on a tree.
Under a canopy of green flags,
My banana heart
Magenta velveteen and just Beginning
to open.

My petticoated flirt:
Three layers of heartskin unfurled In
the air,
a la monroe flashing not
page legs,
but tiny yellow fingers
strung into a filigree of topazes.

But yesterday,
Grandmother plucked it,
Stripped it to the core,
Desecrating aesthetic and romance, And
cut it in two.

One half she served fresh, Dressed in

vinegar
The other, she cooked in coconut milk and chilli
While humming about young girls who fly to learn
Strange ideas in a stranger tongue.

Later, playing me with more rice, In

the dialect, she said,
‘boni. Duwang putabe bale sa sarong puso—’
Here, two dishes from one heart.
I could not eat
Not on a hollow growing
Peculiar in my breast.
Manuscript Poetry Out Loud SHS

Indonesia By
Miemi Jamal

Wind as the score

Waves on percussion
The Birds on strings
Traffic at top vocal
The Maestro is Nature
In symphony with Devine

The essence is pure The

life is simple Roots of
culture
That seeds the nation

There is a smile
always a look
with bold eyes
intense ears wide
nose
Hundreds of Islands
Barring millions
To compete for life

The Taste sometimes bitters No

harm, no danger
Just living, mostly selling

Love or hate Indonesia to

be born in Java
to live in Sanur
smelling of Pandan
Tasting of Padang To
swim the Selats
To be lost in time and space
 The Bali Stone Bicycle By
Oscar Williams

Let us go riding
On the Bali stone bicycle,
Flowers at the wheels Silently
gliding,
The stone bell peals, The
eyesight reels,
As in the heart gathers
A huge stone icicle.

Let us go riding
On the Bali stone bicycle,
Along the great wall Covered
with the writing, Time enough
to fall
When the end comes to all
And the heart itself drops
Like a huge stone icicle.

Let us go riding
On the Bali stone bicycle
Stone are the wheels,
Stone are the flowers
Stone are the steels,
The petals and pedals are stone, And
the stone is crawling
 Over the heart in one O
murderous Medusa,
When will you have done?

Bali Sea
By Lillia Talts Morrison

The spirit flies across the sea

where songs of locusts blend with
sounds of crystal waterfalls in
liquid turquoise dreams

The gardens underneath the sea grow

cunning coral blooms
of every shape and every hue some
tiny, some quite huge

Nearby are groves of fruit and vines in

vivid tints of green
where swaying leaves gold and red are
home to butterflies

The spirit flies across the sea

where songs of locusts blend with
sounds of crystal waterfalls in
liquid turquoise dreams.