Salman Tarik Kureishi
This poem first appeared in The Aleph Review, Vol. 5 (2021).
rewind
start white room almost
no colour not
any more never
any more
any colour stop
rewind
start white room bare
white walls deep cold
but almost
no grief not
any more
white walls white floor even shadows
are white almost
no shadows stop
start walls
bare almost
but not quite faint
whorls and smudges very faint almost
not there
stop
start in pre-dawn
april chill hanged man’s
tongue lolls eyes leave sockets
almost
cold feet
point groundward
stop
start almost some colour
there some grief
perhaps even pain white room white roof
no change stop not
any more
never any more any
change
stop
start every change
for the worse so far almost
every change every time
no more struggle now not
any more
cold white sheet no warmth no
warmth stop rewind
start
in strangulation
neck cracks genitals
tumesce and ejaculate
their sticky store
white clothes soiled
stop
almost some anger
there brief
red flare but now
no colour
rewind start white room
almost
no movement
aeons long uncoiling
history is cold
almost some
shadow there
gone now stop
rewind
start hanged man
dangling in predawn
chill white feet
pointing to earth almost
nothing is changed almost nothing
ever any more
stop
stop
Salman Tarik Kureshi is a Karachi-based English language poet, author, and columnist born in Lahore. Formerly a corporate executive, he is now an editorial consultant at a publishing press. His poems have appeared in several anthologies: Pieces of Eight and Dragonfly in the Sun, Pakistan; Legacy of the Indus, USA; The Blue Wind, UK; in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Routledge; and in occasional ‘little magazines’ in the US, Britain, India, and Pakistan. Landscapes of the Mind, a solo work, was published in 1998. Salman has also been featured in the annual Pakistan Literature Journal, formerly published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. He writes on socio-political topics for the weekly The Friday Times and dailies Dawn, Daily Times, and Sun.
Rabeya Jalil is a visual artist and art educator based in Lahore. She received her undergraduate degree from the National College of Arts, Lahore and a Masters in Education from Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, on a Fulbright Scholarship. Jalil’s practice includes painting, curriculum development, teacher-education and writing. She is a founding co-editor for the Journal of Art Education Pakistan (JAEP), the first peer-reviewed publication about art education in Pakistan and is co-director of Conversations, an online initiative about teaching projects in art and design education. Jalil has presented at art education conferences in Lahore, Islamabad, Boston, New York, Fort Worth, San Diego, Chicago, Seattle and Istanbul. Her work has been exhibited in Pakistan, UAE, USA, UK, Portugal and India. Currently, she is Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Art at the National College of Arts, Lahore.