Reading Poetry at the Attorney General’s Department
A prisoner goes to the jail’s library to borrow a book. The librarian says, “I am sorry, we don’t have this book, but we have its author.” It’s a Turkish joke, much…
Poetry
Richard
Animals continue to crack in Sri Lanka, Richard. Lions don’t exist in the natural state, nor tigers roam through the brush. Elephants, yes, are still around, mostly straggly survivors in an orphanage…
This Country is Mine
Image Courtesy of A poem reflecting on the meaning of independence day. This country isn’t yours to offer, Upon the conditions set by you. You can deny me the right to be…
Inauguration
I put on a shirt today with red and blue stripes bordering a sea of white, and wrapping my legs a pair of blue jeans, my hair black as crows that…
Prisoners Are Human Beings
When we aren’t able to give you more room, than you had inside your mother’s womb, When we ask you to excrete, in a plastic bag, like a dog on the…
Trusting Decrees, Sri Lankan Style
Image courtesy AFP/Times of India quoted police spokesman S P Jaliya Senaratne as saying. Senarante I congratulate you. Your diction is pithy, succinct, commendable on all counts. And how sweeping you…
Unsettled Account
I am not surprised by the new leadership’s decision to ban the playing of the anthem in Tamil at Independence Day celebrations. Key members of this government ran the show when the…
Rehabilitation
The outgoing president of my former country just pardoned Jude Jayamaha, murderer of the young Yvonne Jonsson, who had dual Sri Lankan and Swedish nationality, bludgeoned to death in an apartment at…
Free Elephants
Where elephants go to die were departments of Spanish literature in remote Plains and Midwestern colleges. according to Jose Donoso. For me, these pictures of an emaciated, starved, older female, broken, tired,…
Cathedral, Jaffna
I am praying in a pew at Saint Mary’s Cathedral. The building has suffered burning, cyclones, the Eelam war’s bombs. Four hundred years ago Portuguese built the first church here, which…
Man Versus Elephant
I hear compensation due for an attack by a wild elephant will increase to rupees 500,000 from the current 200 K in Sri Lanka. Henceforth, if you are unlucky enough to…
Hello Mr Soldier
On the wooden bench, deep in the land of the warriors, Your Jaipur prosthetic leg takes on a new posture; A docile pet, sitting snugly next to you, watchfully spying. That stump…
My Uchipattam
My mother parts my hair in the middle, Places the Uchipattam at the center. It rests on my forehead. It feels cold. She tells me that I look like my grandmother; Not…
Habeas Corpus
We returned to the place Where we were buried in a hurry “Let’s look for our bodies,” we said We searched the edge of the lagoon, the marsh Where uniformed men said…