Ghazal for an Amputation
You ban anesthesia, blood-game the sweet
Evict her, chase her, bomb her, then blame the sweet
How to cut her little legs to save her life?
How inhabit love’s rubble, when you maim the sweet?
Ghosts, even of the burnt olive groves, rise
as stars of Bethlehem—no way to tame the sweet
No sugar in the promised land to numb your pain
Mary herself pours you nectar, names the sweet
Child, your once-supple limbs will, to you, return
What belongs in paradise, will claim the sweet
Zeest, you saw the world fray, weep, dance the dabkeh
Saw how, by love’s force the bitter became the sweet
Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s poetry and essays have been published worldwide. She is the winner of the San Diego Book Award, Sable’s Hybrid Book Prize, and the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize, among other distinctions. Her books include two poetry collections, a book of Ghazals and essays on the Ghazal form titled Ghazal Cosmopolitan, and a lyric memoir, Comb. Her latest nonfiction was published in Best Spiritual Literature Vol. 9 from Orison Press, and poetry in In the New Century: An Anthology of Pakistani Literature in English (Oxford).
This week, SWWIM and Matwaala are coming together to celebrate women writers of South Asian heritage with a week of poetry and a SWWIM x Matwaala writing residency and reading at The Betsy-South Beach featuring visiting writer Nina Sudhakar and local writer Carolene Kurien. (The reading will take place on September 11 at 7:00 pm. Please join us in person or via Instagram Live or Facebook Live!)
Matwaala was launched in 2015 to increase the visibility of diasporic South Asian poets (from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan) in the mainstream American literary landscape. The name Matwaala in a transferred sense suggests the intoxication of poetic creativity. Matwaala showcases the diversity within the South Asian community—and within the Indo-American community.
A note from Matwaala: Matwaala, the South Asian Diaspora Poetry Collective, is honored to join hands with SWWIM in celebrating a week of South Asian poetry that celebrates Matwaala’s tenth anniversary. A thoughtfully curated selection of women poets offer us a constellation of rich poetry this week. Together with SWWIM, we affirm poetry’s power to bridge distances, and amplify voices.