Minstrelry
for Paul Dunbar
My sisters & I write all day & night about silk
its delicate weft golden peacocks & parrots
rush of wind through ink hair waiting. Just the word
chanted like a sutra silk silk silk silk
brings the poetry buyers to their knees
stoned on the musk of exotic suffering Whatever
we say love war race hate
if we wrap it in silk they will take it
home, unminding. It will live in their rooms amid demons
of jade throw pillows Chinese funeral papers
marble dust from the Taj Mahal. At night
we will wriggle out in ribbons of soft meat like worms
feasting.
This selection comes from Minal Hajratwala’s book Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment, available now from The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective. Purchase your copy here!
Minal Hajratwala (www.minalhajratwala.com) is author of the award-winning epic Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (2009), which was called “incomparable” by Alice Walker and “searingly honest” by the Washington Post, and editor of Out! Stories from the New Queer India (2013). Her latest book is Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment, published by The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a collective of which she is a co-founder. She graduated from Stanford University, was a fellow at Columbia University, and was a 2011 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar. As a writing coach, she loves helping people give voice to untold stories.
Ben McClendon is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He previously studied poetry at Northern Arizona University after teaching high school English for several years. His poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Yemassee, Chautauqua, Redivider, Rattle, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Ben lives with his husband in Knoxville.
- Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Writing the Grotesque: A Generative Poetry Event” with Hannah V. Warren - October 3, 2023
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bath by Jen Silverman - October 3, 2023
- Lyric Essentials: Subhaga Crystal Bacon Reads Ely Shipley - October 2, 2023
2 thoughts on “The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Minal Hajratwala’s “Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment””