Three Poems
by Saima Afreen

Room for Rent

​The last winter is still wrapped
in a sodden quilt, a few mornings
painted on the wall smell of tiger lilies;
the window is still shaking, with
 my suicide note.
 
No it’s not musty air greeting you,
my breaths still embrace the dust.
With ink I had extinguished the stars;
the candle light will cut a square
in the window.
 
The glazier fixes the glass pane
through which sluiced my voice
perhaps swinging on a cobweb;
I had shouted for Gaza, Kashmir;
the rectangle of the bed is
a slogan, too.
 
In the cupboard it’s still raining,
nothing can wash away my scent.
a drop of it fell on the mosaic floor
that the landlady has rented you;
its value Rs 000000000000000.00?

The Charpoy My Grandma Left
 
There she is again in shadows
Of white cotton sari, sitting
smiling on the charpoy she
chose from her father’s house
as a 13-year-old bride when red
was the only colour she knew.
 
Then she saw her house near the border
Of Pakistan: a white square fading in
Orange dusk. All that was left in her eyes
Was print of barbed wires and prayers on her lips
With the rosary moving in her fingers
like the planets. The charpoy creaked
under the weight of violence her face sighed with
each rope in its criss-cross knew a tale:
 
the lemon pickles drying in the sun
bobbled like the chopped stories she
heard from Baluchi nomads that sold
sunlight in glass jars. Later the sun
was exiled in hollow eyes. A beam
was worth millions of lives;
 
faces grew like jungles, stuck in
my grandma’s braids then black.
She saw flags like hawks hovering
against the blue of her eyes. A strip
of sky remained in her iris. She took
that and folded under her pillow.
 
Summer moon often peeps at the
silent charpoy that she left for us.
Its ropes DNA of  many anecdotes;
My hands touch its wooden
legs – old history shifts
In another map
My grandma took with her.

 
My Father's Last Prayer
 
Murmur of verses
on summer-soaked
lips of old women;
their cotton dresses
sieve the milk of stars.
 
My father picks
starlight for his
velvet prayer mat.
​
The city lies below the
boulder boundaries.
It glitters on his index finger.
 
he touches
breath of his five children
sleeping.
 
The lotus of his palms
 
is wet with morning rain.
The peasants will reap
this rain on Eid.
 
His murmurs
 
rip the layer of moonlight
in the iron bucket. The clock
strikes four. Halwa and date-palms
 
on table;  black slaves freed
from the docked ship. Abraham’s
sheep bleats. In the faraway corner
 
I look for my father’s prayers
only to find his skull cap
in the shadows of a new moon.