A sure-shot archer sharpened his blade. He had been cutting cane when he heard the royal challenge. He would take a shot, but it would mean exile from a favorable rebirth.
His baby rice, his babies and wife, his father, mother, brother, would all disappear into diasporic mythology.
After this, he could not remain in his hometown.
He would remember their names and name his new children after ghosts roaming the paddy fields.
baki ii raja eklauta raja na rahe. okar ande angrej raja dwara chural gail.
okar sona mahel pinjara bhail. uu aapan pankh kinchke nikalis.
din mein raja khali das-das minit khatir so sakal aur sapna mein hamesa hawa mein urat rahe.
aur oise uu rahe tabtak kokila ke awaaj sunai na del.
But the king wasn’t the only king. His balls had already been stolen by the British.
His golden mahal was a cage. He began plucking his own feathers.
In the daylight the king slept in ten-minute intervals and always in his brief dreams he flew through the air.
And always he was flying until the biting cry of the koyal.
raja ii sapana dekhela:
jangal mein akela hoike uu nadiya ke dikhai del uu jab nadiya ke uupar urdela. koi baat se darela baki na janile ke, uu mani jaise hai hawa jab oke le jaila—nadiya ke pani jaise koi nauwa ke le jaila laheriya par. okar pankha lakdri jaise bhail aur raja kuch dekhela: ekgo pahar jaun par himalaya chitaan aur barf se banayal mandir hai.
uu surya mantra pardhat urdela.
uu aapan muh kholela aur aditya-bhagwan ke namaskar karela.
The king dreams:
Alone in the forest and jungles he sees the snaking rivers as he soars and thinks the fear is in fact an emerald as the gusts push his wings along a ghostly current—urgently ferreting his boatlike body of feathers away to see something grave and important: a mountain covered in temples—some hewn of the Himalayan rock and ice.
He flies among the mantras recited at sunrise.
He parts his lips and bows to the sun.
raja ii sapna dekhela:
jahaaj se uupar urdela aur goli chalayat dekhela banduk se. log jaun jahaaj ke andar bandhe rahe okar faane hawa mein phelat hai. okar sange uu raja urdela. uu urdela.
uu gaana bhagwan se puchela, ham logan ka karis ke ham oise bandhe hai?
The king dreams:
He flies above wooden ships with dark hulls like dusk and sees the puffs of cannon fire. He flies with the wailing songs of people trapped in the ship’s bellies.
Songs that ask the gods what have we done in this life to be trapped so?
koi nahin kokila ke hatya kare mangela.
dwijah ke mare sabse barka paap mane jaila.
aur dwijah ke matlab: dui—second jah—born.
aur dwijah ke matlab: uu jaun ke janeu bhail.
aur dwijah ke matlab: pesaab kare khatir janeo kaan me bandhela.
aur bhala kaun oise daag aapan ke lage mange hai.
No one wanted to kill the songbird.
Killing a bird that is twice born is the most heinous of sins.
And dwijah means: one who wears the cotton thread.
And dwijah means: one who ties it around his ear as he squats to piss.
And nobody wants such a stain.
raja ii sapna dekhela: pital ke dabbe mein uu badariya mein kudela aur oke niche raat aur saheriya chamkela. andhera mein lagela ke koi pachhi ke mul, je kukariya jaise jamin par lagela.
The king dreams:
In a metal box he jumps to the clouds and below, the night and sparkle of cities, or towns spattered like bird shit or blood on the earth, which crusts over in cement scabs.
uutar ke oriya urdela, barf ke dwip tak.
He flies north to the frozen island.
purab ke oriya urdela jehar okar santan aapan haddiya jamin mein rakhi hai.
He flies west to the country where his kin will bury his bones in the ground.
dakshin ke oriya urdela oise dwip tak jehar uu oise sapanwa dekhila je khali angreji ganna aur creolese bhasa ho. sach mein jehar bhi kahin hosakela.
He flies south to the island he dreams in English only of cane and Creole—he could be anywhere, it’s true.
uu purab urdela, aur samay bhi bitela. baki samay paachhe bhi urdela ii dekhe khatir: ke agar mahades ke tukarde ekgo hi tukarde jord sake dubara, aur agar okar simiya ke kabitiya angreji mein hoijai.
He flies east, forward in time but backward to see if he will fit back—the continental stone cleft in two, tumbles in the sea, edges no longer retroflexed and cerebral, and his poetry alveolar.
chalal gayal jamana se ohe oke vapsi kare nai na sakela.
He is gone so long that his return is not a return.
daftar ke khirdkiya ke baahar, saher ke roshni je niche hoi, badariya chamkela, uu gaaye lagela.
Outside the window in his regulation-size space, the dark clouds glow from the city lights beneath.
dhanurdhari aapan baan iikwa par tej karela. hawa mein se urdela aur ekgo gayak ke marela. ekgo hi tir se kokila ke hirday tardakela. ekgo hi tir se dhanurdari ke yahso chorde ke hai aur kabhi nahin laut sakihai. ekgo hi tir aur anguri chhap uu kantrak manjur karela. so girmitiya bhail.
The archer sharpens his arrow on a sun-dried brick. It sails through the air and strikes a song. With one arrow lined in feathers the koyal’s heart ruptures. With one arrow shot the archer must leave the kingdom and never return. With one arrow and a fingerprint he signs his terms of indenture. So come so done: he becomes a Girmitiya.
dhanurdhari pachhi ke panka nochela, aur chamri nikaalela. aante nikaalke uu dhard ke pakayela tej aag se taaki okar mans mein nami rahe jai. jeera, mirch, dahi, saunph, aur kali mirch ke chaunk. uu aag mein rakhe tab tak laal na hoye.
The archer plucks the bird, skins it. The disemboweled carcass he stabs with a spit and roasts at high heat to keep the tenderness that he let die for money. Rubbed in cumin, chilies, and yogurt, encrusted in anise and black peppercorns. He roasts it until it’s golden brown.
jhola mein saman rakhela baki okar kapra, murtiya, aur masala aapan saath na la sake. angrej wale oke station mein bandhela aur chini ke deswa tak le jaihai kaheki uu anguri chhap lagal dhanus uthaiye ke samay. angrej oke batiawela ke chinta na kare, raja tohar sange jaihai.
He packs his rucksack but is stripped of his clothing and supplies, his pictures of the gods and all his spices. The English guards at the docks chain him onto a ship bound for the sugar country, for he signed this contract when he raised the arrow to his eyeline. They tell him not to worry, the king would surely follow.
chandi ke thaariya par rakhal gayal, raja pahile tukarda khaye ke ii koyaliya ke raat-git khayela. uu kokila ke gaana nigalela.
The king, served a silver thali, raises the first morsel to his lips, bites and chews up the koyal’s dusk and dawn music. With the raising of his royal tongue to his soft palate he swallows the birdsong whole.
hawa leila etna pura khusi se. ehi samay oke sab ke sab yaad okar khopariya se urd chordela, pachhiya jaise dussar ghosalwa ke khoj mein.
He gasps for air in sheer delight for such delicious opulence. At this moment, his memories all fly from him, free birds of flight and wind, seeking a new home across the sea.
uu na janela ke kaun hai aur kehar jaila. darpanwa mein naak aur aakhiya dikhayal deila baki uu khali ekgo chehera dekhela, koi aapan ke pehechan, koi katha, koi gaana nahin rahe gayal.
He no longer knows who he is or where he is going. He looks in the mirror at his brown nose and dark eyes, but all he sees is a face, there is no I, no stories or songs of his own.
My Veil’s Stain
March 3rd Prolepsis: At the Kitchen Table with Zeke
“My grandfather died in a fire and his body was found charred.” Zeke’s face was expressionless as he said this. He’d come to spend the week with me when Zane threw his dresses in a plastic trash bag and clopped out of our apartment. It was still cold outside and the pipes began their kicking to warm the prewar building. Our
friendship was able to bloom again after I asked Zeke, like I asked Sef, to forgive my lapse in judgement that caused us to not speak for the duration of my relationship with Zane.
Zeke rubbed his shaved head, took a sip of tea, and placed the mug on the round kitchen table. “Yeah, I can only imagine the pain he must have felt.” We were only recently lovers, despite being attracted to each other for years. He came over that weekend and stayed for four days.
“Did your mother’s family sue?” I asked and looked out the window and into the courtyard where the cement lions guarded the entrance. I got up to bring more cookies to the table. Our chai long since done and cold. We were used to talking about our families—especially in the kitchen.
“Who cares if Natives die?” he laughed. Zeke was from the Southwest and recently moved to New York for the same reason that I did—to be a fag of color in a big city. I was a settler and he was an indigenous person, though we were both called Indians by people who “discovered” us—named after the river Indus by idiots from the outside. Because of Indian indenture my family had our land erased from under our feet and became settlers on indigenous lands in Guyana. Because of American expansionism and settler colonization the US government and history books tried to erase Zeke’s family from their lands. We shared our stories like long lost kin.
“Were you close?” I asked.
“Yes, he taught me what I know about our family tree.”
I thought of what it would be like to lose someone. Zane left but was still alive. Sef left also but he was alive, too. I’d never really lost anyone I was close to. I had uncles who’d died when I was younger, but the pain never echoed inside me. No one I had ever loved had been taken from me.
Zeke continued, the desert full of life: night-blooming cacti and Gila monsters springing from his mouth. “But he came back to say goodbye.”
I believed it. Ghost stories were the lifeblood of family get-togethers, long after the food was eaten and the drinks drunk—all of us well liquored and all the doors open to spirits. I opened my door to spirits with Zeke.
The wind stirred the leaves in the courtyard beneath us. I felt chicken skin tickle the nape of my neck and creep down my spine. I would want to meet my beloved elders on their journeys into their next lives.
Sleep Paralysis
The corner of my bedroom was dark after Zane left. Learning to sleep alone was the most difficult part. I had grown accustomed to a heavy leg over my own. I tried my best to fill my bed with as many men as would stay. They filled the empty space in the bed and distracted me in my spiral into depression that would claim my last years spent in New York City.
My apartment was creepy when I was alone. At night the closet opened its mouth and yawned. The mirror on the closet door was probably as old as the building. It was tarnished in the corners and warped with spots of brown and black. I saw eyes and teeth shining back at me as I lay in bed, head turned to the room’s entrance.
In the night the closet door creaked open. The mirror swung toward the wall and out of the closet’s dark throat stepped a shadow with the figure of a man. It was seven feet tall and walked over to the side of the bed where I lay.
I could not move. My heart beat wildly and all I could hear was the thumping in my chest, in my head, in my mouth. Cold sweat dripped from my forehead.
The figure walked to me and loomed over my body. I couldn’t see its face though I knew it was smiling a toothy grin at me.
You will die come morning. It whispered to me without moving its mouth or making a sound, its words projected directly into my mind.
After rolling around under the comforter for what felt like ages, I tried to scream, to move, but couldn’t.
I thought, If I could just move, it would go away. I tried to scream, Zane, help!
The shadow dissipated, and so did my need for Zane.
March 3rd Prolepsis: At the Kitchen Table with Zeke
We had just watched “Night of the Living Dead” during our horror movie binge. I wanted so badly to make a joke, but this was sacred territory: time to speak of our ancestors, not to make flippant references to American pop culture. The spirits were listening, after all.
“What do you mean? Your grandfather visited you?” I shifted my weight in my chair. I imagined that this was the beginning of a ghost story. I had my own. It was called sleep paralysis.
In the morning my friends would laugh at me when I admitted to believing in ghosts. But now I sat across the table from Zeke as we drank our afternoon chai and ate cookies. I took crumbs and made constellations on the table’s veneer.
Zeke spoke finally. “My grandfather came to me three days later in a dream to tell me that he was okay. The entire next day I could smell burning mesquite.”
March 16th: In the Bedroom Alone
I couldn’t move. The comforter was lead. I looked to my left. Zane had left almost three weeks before and I was here alone in my one-bedroom flat. Dread crept into the room like a thief. I was on my back and could see that the closet door was shut. Down the hall the front door’s lock latch snapped. Heavy footsteps creaked across the floorboards down the hall. I could see my bedroom door slowly open.
Something sat at the foot of my bed. It was like a shadow in the darkness—a dense fog in the shape of a person. Like a person’s shadow on a partly cloudy day, outline blurred. I felt the mattress depress. A palm on my chest pressed me into the pillow.
My forehead dripped. I could not move or turn over, my body still thick in the sleep of the gamma-aminobutyric acid and glycine that keeps the sleeping body still. If I could just wiggle my fingers, and turn my body over, this terror would end. Someone was there with me. Sleep paralysis be damned.
With a start I gasped and shot straight up. I was raining like a monsoon cloud; my sheets were soaked with fear. The clock glared red—6:37 a.m. I didn’t have to get up for another twenty-three minutes, but I was wide awake and desperate to leave the apartment.
I got up and dressed for the day’s work and had more time to drink all of the coffee’s mud that I French-pressed in the morning.
March 16th: Death Plays Chess
The hallway at the foyer level of the building was grand—or once grand. The lavish, former fireplaces were all filled in with bricks and plywood. Paintings were muraled onto the wall complete with frames, painted to look marginally three-dimensional. The floor was a checkerboard of white and black linoleum squares, a veritable David Lynch fantasyscape. Simulated and hollow. An old body falling into decay, covered in lead-based paint that was chipping away.
In the morning I moved about the chessboard floor as a knight. I always thought the horse pieces were the prettiest, the most realistic. I mused, this is what life is—a series of steps in the right or wrong direction. The right direction taken, I could be a successful teacher, a good lover and partner.
If I took wrong or rushed steps I would be taken down, killed, murdered, or worse—I would squander my life. Every decision was a compact with death. Crossing the street was a chess game with death. So was straining on the toilet. Or having unprotected sex with four different men in one week. Any move with Zane would have been one into destruction.
My cell phone vibrated against my thigh. Pap, it read, his picture grayed at the temples. I hadn’t spoken to him in a while. Last time we talked he said that I was abominable. I think he meant abomination. I preferred being a snowman even if it had a seasonal shelf life.
“Hello, my son.” My father’s voice was a bird that was trapped and couldn’t migrate south in December. It was March. I was his “son” again. His throat’s feathers must have been ragged. I shuddered.
Times My Father Said, Don’t Call Me Pap
When I took a pushpin when I was eight and stabbed every picture of my brother that I could see through his nose.
When I didn’t want to massage his legs anymore, but I had to because he bought me the hot-pink sunglasses from Pizza Hut. When he gave them to me I said, I love you.
When I came home from New York I told him that Pua thought that I was using her house as a gay brothel. He called up all of his sisters and told them that Clarice had lied about it all, making up the story because she was still angry about some time my father scolded her when she was a child.
When he found out that I was seeing a man.
March 16th: Death Plays Phone Tag
“Yes, hi, Pap,” I cleared my throat.
“I’ve been trying to call you. …” he trailed off. I checked my phone: five missed calls. Something was wrong. He would never just call me. Especially not in the morning.
“I’m just calling to tell you that your Aji passed away in Toronto this morning.” The nurses said that she tripped and fell in the bathtub. They found her maybe an hour after it happened. I felt like my feet were made of cement. I couldn’t move. I was stunned, for the second time this morning.
“They said she died instantly.”
It couldn’t be. I’d just talked to Aji on the phone. My stomach lurched and I felt lightheaded. I looked at my phone again. It was 8:15 a.m.
Antiman Page 25