POETRY: MARYAM GOWRALLI

​A DISCUSSION WITH OLD MAN WHO LIVES IN THE FOREST 

Old Javanese: urang [person] utan [forest], or “person of the forest”
 
 
I
In the treetops, I once saw my grandfather wrap a cigarette filled
with cloves and cardamom. Watched him take a pull and felt
the marrow      thin inside my bones.   The aroma, a reminder of
places I intended to go, though they had receded into a room called
extinction. It was odd to see him there. His beaded eyes a reminder
that culture      and the wild-man were             not incongruent like
the translations may say. Arms languid and longer than recalling.
There is no need to split apart my body to search for
            the similarities.             His flapping                 cheeks 
are shaped in apocalyptic medallions like my brothers. Ache
unfurls at the vision of smiling red hairs, while I remain at
the precipice    of the street below.      He starts a puff,  
                         did you ever stop to consider that Enkidu represents
                         the start of the Anthropocene?
 
 
 
 
 
II
“I no longer have the four arms essential to semi-terrestrial living.
If we spent eighty percent of our lives in trees, we’d ache less.”
He sees            irony,   a corn of          transcendental  hypocrisy,
to this fir-framed house liver, but it’s his blood. In the middle
of the night, she wears solitude in the plenty of her veins and
he sews            the bones.       Clotted with     wars and grafts,
cultivations serving a new purpose: pushing nutrition further into
fissures too deep that only plantations exist there. Impenetrable
flat cacophony incurs   scarcity and violence    upon
the next generation of everything. She wants to fix forever, but the paws
and fungi that used to cross paths for tea have already been replaced.
He watches      her quivering   aftereffects of stitching,
                        don’t let the palms take root like the Asphodel Fields,
                        they make you forget of the habitats that once were.

 

 
 
 

III
It’s an odd sight, to see him on a mechanical contraption,
peddles elucidating the enormity of his legs. Large V’s
jutting out like wings   of a collapsing aircraft,             a spectacle
not meant to be observed. A saffron-cloak and rollup in his jaw
frees his arms for travel. This time, he has come to visit her. Axles and
            wheels              a vortex           to further phenomenological
discussions. She wants to dream of a good place, barren from
complications, but the body is hectic with museums trips and forecasts.
He enters         her cerebrum   the way one enters a show,     
popcorn and candies in stuffed purses. She’s read up on Heidegger
and Euripides, but the discourse isn’t enough to stop a cynical
critic of a family member. In low coos he        throws the mantle,
                         every person in your time is Melinoë birthed from inherited madness,
                         birthed from a river in the underworld. so swim through it in victory.

As a Canadian, Maryam Gowralli draws inspiration from her Trinidadian-Indian and Indonesian heritage. She is an MA student in English Literature at the University of Calgary and is the Creative Nonfiction Editor for filling Station magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Citizenship in Water is forthcoming with That Painted Horse Press in 2021. You can find her works at PRISM International, The Carribean Journal and untethered magazine among others.