Poetry by Chetna Kuanr
Passport
I watch him caress her eyebrows to sleep I sit in a double bound Ziplock. The empire’s gift. My stamps slipping, through immigration The empire gives her three more years She strokes the gold on his nose Did she screw it loose ? It makes her snicker later. His playful teasing. The banter. Her colonized body, soft, under another porcelain skin. Wet, so wet. Good, so good. It's serendipitous. A week later It helps her write, her juices Flowing rivers on his fingers He’s tender, she’s making him laugh. When did her azadi become so petty ? House burning. Women burning. In another life, forget me in your dresser In this daylight. She’s holding on to my providence My binds must match her eyes, her digits My binds belong to rubble. Only ruins go to museums. Tonight, I don't arrest her. She’s warming his chest He’s warming her tunnels. Assiduous. Meticulous. Next morning, I'm heaving on her chest Her thighs tired. Carcerality, is tracking me. I’m stamped again. She nuzzles into his twin earrings. Has she fallen in love? With the empire marking its presence on me ? She giggles, he’s teasing her impatience She’s building fleeting homes Dreaming again, when he wraps her softly For the second time that night. Her house is burning. But she’s looking just for me. Paper thin. Paper soft. 36-page booklet. Lost. But laughing a lot. Who has she left behind? Ailing. Frailing. Bleeding. They’re bleeding in her home. Again, she’s in new arms. Saying nothing is home. He’s standing there presenting their subjectivity. With words that pierce her with guilt. She disagrees vehemently. But how’s he feeling the wetness between her two holes So tenderly. Lustful azadi, safely sealed me. Rip apart the honor your nation assigned you to at birth, with me. Discomforting the empire, when she plays carelessly with Her. She touches her, sweet her. Protectively. It takes me, all of me. Safe? Telling her every day. Your family dies within two decades. Find love in people’s laughter. Raw, thrills when she covets you. She’s too precious. She will play with wandering golden butterflies instead. Watch them blush when she plays with them . Lustful azadi. Between her thighs. Laugh between her nipples Sweating. Play a role for the empire. Unassimilable. Greedily, for momentary hands in hers. Because isn’t this what the nation wants? Settle. Settle. Migrate, and settle. Liminal lives. The phones will blare in a few hours. She’ll drive butterflies out. In her third decade, still scared of sharing nightmares. Craving fried eggs and coffee. Pushing away, deciding butterflies only get to hear her cogent arguments. How can she crave so many in a week? Or did thoughts begin, she may want to gaze at the moon with him? Just for a few days every year. Carcerality is tracking her. Feel her fingers rub herself . Experience it again, when she writes about me. What does she know about love? She turned her back on home. Looking for this petty pathetic azadi. Yet she remembers only their giggles, laughs and smiles. Our bodies don’t forget. The sounds. Those are prints. The scans don’t recognize. On me.
Chetna Kuanr was born in India, and is a graduate student in the field of social anthropology in Boston, USA, where she studies questions of immigration, land dispossession, and gendered kinship in rural farmlands of India. This poem was inspired by a visit to Pablo Neruda's house in Santiago de Chile.