Mehvash Amin
The photographer, Jaffer Hasan, based in Karachi, sent me a cornucopia of photographs a while ago. While all of them were stunning, his mesmeric photos of the rides at an amusement park prompted my own poem below, as well as my choice from the archives of The Aleph Review: a humorous story called 'Joyless in Joyland', written anonymously by C.Crowe about a woman who takes her young grandchild to the rides in Lahore.
On the photo below: One of the photos in Jaffer's series titled 'This Used to Be my Playground'. The rest will follow before end-July.
Funland
The circuitry of magic
of bones knowing thrill
and light flying drunk
in spirals
happy
hallucinogens
Men hustling tickets
and cold cokes
then skin rising in riptides
skinny-dipping in jellying
screaming neon bat-following
movement
snipping off earlier
today, later tonight,
tomorrow. No thought
to woman waiting, child
no thought to job or dust
of graves, to hobbits that
are masters, to dirt-speckled
dal and onions
eaten with blackened roti
All that is good
enmeshed
light, motion, wind
scream the same that
escaped baby lungs
so long ago
primal mother-longing
forgotten, sad father
flung in gutter
Just this synergic
undulation
Riding horse dragon
woman
being in whale-belly
and stars
at the same time.
Till the ride slows
the skin darkens
the hair slicks
the hand clutches
not nebulae
but this rod, gluey
with this-world sweat
Getting off on feet
wings gone
thinking:
next time
next time
next time