Honorable Mention, Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, selected by the NEPC Board
The Po-Co Kid
maatahet logan bol na sake hai
darsana nahin maral, murjhaake
Let’s get one thing queer—I’m no Sabu-like sidekick,
I’m the main drag. Ram Ram in a sari; salaam
on the street. I don’t speak Hindu, Paki, or Indian,
can’t control minds, have no psychic powers.
I clip my yellow nails at dusk; on Saturday nights
I shave my head. Forgive me Shiva,
forgive me Saturn. I’m Coolie on Liberty Ave, desi
in Jackson Heights—where lights spell Seasons Greetings
to cover Christmas, Diwali, and Eid—
where white folks in ethnic aisles ask, Will your parents
arrange your bride? while Ma and I scope out fags,
gyaff, and laugh while aunties thread our eyebrows.
“Thee subaltern cannot speak.
Representation has not withered away.”
Indo-Queer IV
for Sundari
dudh rahe dudh aur pani rahe pani
urdat pakshi ke rang kaun dekh sakela
Hear your Aji talk, Beta, you na get sense?
Hear your Nani say, Chach, you head na gi’ you wuk?
When the elders gather they will all clap their hands,
they will beg your rainbowed silks to wave
and wave. I’ve seen it in Queens, at the Rajkumari
Center in curls, in kajal, in a lehenga.
You dance-walk to buskers’ beats down Liberty
the A train and E, to rum an’ Coke and your wine,
with five countries in your migration story.
You still na get shame, your father rum-stunned snores,
though your mother cries for two years straight after
she finds another man’s underwear in your laundry.
Milk remains milk, water, water,
who can make out the flying bird’s colors?
Chutney Mashup
aaj sawaliya ham na jaibe bhitar
balma, ulat pavan chal gaya, chadar bichao
You tie your veil to meet me in the courtyard,
though there no neem tree grows. You wrap your limbs
tightly about mine as jamun fruits betray
their pedicels and stain the concrete with ruby wine.
The shehnai weeps for us only; inside
my strength has ebbed. Spread a sheet on the earth, balma,
that when weary we may lie on silk in peace.
Despite your wise restraint your morals will scatter
in a fire dance—what god can save us?
I will never escape the body’s betrayal.
The neighbor women jeer at the stains on my veil,
my ruined fabric I pleat and tuck at my waist.
Today, love, I will not go outside.
Love, against the backwards wind, spread a sheet.
Rajiv Mohabir
Rajiv Mohabir, an immigrant to the United States, is the author of Cutlish (Four Way Books 2021, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry), The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press 2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize; Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention 2018) and The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books 2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017), and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (Kaya Press 2019), which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His memoir Antiman (Restless Books 2021) received the Restless Books’ New Immigrant Writing Prize. He received his PhD in English from the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa and his MFA in Poetry from Queens College, CUNY. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College. He lives in the Boston area.