I woke up with a poem in my head — Two Poems by Saadia Peerzada
Saadia Peerzada presents two poems that conjure a sense of being in two places or spaces at once, at two different times that collide between thought, evocation and memory. There is the space where a poem seeks to leap into the quotidian and break into its sadness, and perhaps even disrupt its irrem
How Will You Live?
I woke up with a poem in my head
and lost it promptly by midday,
father told me to do what the bank had asked,
so I disengaged myself from my stupid life
and climbed into the uncomfortable gait of ‘doing.’
“How will you live?”[1] the bank asks me,
“Stupidly,” the voice in me happy at the question.
Mother mimes reading to tell me
literature isn’t enough–
A different time coats the stairs
of the chest disease hospital.
Men look on through their empty green eyes,
a foreign sun over the scene.
Is it possible to read James Merill
in times like these?
The voice of the poem guilty
under all the hope.
Mostly, one desires safety from cruelty
but not in the form of silence.
[1] Alternate title for The Boy and The Heron,
a 2023 Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki
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Photography by Basit Zargar
Record Temperatures
In July, the halal haribo melts on the shelves of 7/11
the workers snap at each other before noon, antsy from the heat.
Billy Joel plays while the sun changes the colours of Woontpor
Being here feels like a movie, albeit a really bad one.