Sudden Death with Elephants
Six elephants, two adults, four babies, were slaughtered by a train traveling at high speed through a wildlife corridor between two natural reserves. A tragedy. No humans injured but engine…
Author: Indran Amirthanayagam
Independence
Independence Day. From whom? The British? A way of thinking, of making order, katcheris and ledgers, taxes and justices of the peace. Every society needs the rule of order, grace…
Outside the Oval Office
I make poems constantly about oddities and offenses in American political practice, how one president sent bombs, jets, and drones for use by a rogue state and its murderous army, …
Self Help Words for the Inauguration
The name is vital. Spell it right. If you err, apologize and correct. Then go on as the matter becomes urgent, to speak poems that soar from memory and emotion, rise…
Jimmy Carter
Forbes Jimmy Carter has died, after one hundred years, after healing river blindness, ensuring fair elections, negotiating the release of prisoners, calling out tyranny, assuring that to love your neighbor…
Christmas Card to a President
You ask me to sign a card to the outgoing president and his teacher spouse. Happy to do so while biting my tongue and repeating the mantra that this is a…
Nothing New Said or Done
The recital called in the name of war and peace did not finish in peace. A late reader from the world of the Open Mic rose up to question the…
Listen
Listen to the doctor, the pediatrician, the head of the children’s hospital in North Gaza. Listen to him mourn his son. Listen to his cries, his wailing. his son killed…
Nyet
No more refugees. No more border- crossers. No more morning after pills. No more right to decide who will decide if I will bear the greatest child in the greatest nation….
Traveling Genocide
I will not be silent. When Sri Lankan soldiers murdered seventy thousand Tamil civilians in the Vanni during the last months of the last Eelam War, there were cries…
Out of Yaffa
He has never visited Yaffa, home of his grandfather, just forty miles away across No Man’s land and the border fence. He has not seen the Wailing Wall, stepped on the…
A Bloody Turn
You say we are all traumatized by this genocide, that we are responsible as well, that we cannot hide under books or pillows from drones, fighter jets and two thousand pound bombs….
Gaza, First Death Anniversary
International Words cannot bring back the dead. But they can heal the wounded my teacher said. I went to the house; found its absence baffling and bitter like smoke disappearing…
Persistence
The persistence of this gash, persnickety yet pernicious, painful, powerful, collective memory, to get the image framed for the memorial service, bodies burnt on the Yal Devi Express, houses and kovil…
The Utility of Tears
These tears fall into buckets, run to streams and rivers. These tears, shed weight from the body, leave a light patina like drops on the windowpane. How to go on…