smog ghazals in transposition
Raleigh, NC
2024, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
After Delhi, India
my ammamma is splayed out on this city’s splitting backbone,
sun-baptized ground. her palms cradling the curl of a black deity,
fetal positioned. this is the land where hymns arch their bodies
through the clouds, stretch their limbs & yawn & where Gods
are Delhi’s breaths. we were all born prayers, inhales whittled into
boys, boys whittled into their smog-born mothers. above, I hear God
coughing out the prayers we held close to our chests. the atmosphere
draping all our sins, gold-plated pins, the saree of a crying goddess.
in this city I hear the word sin and cannot distinguish it from son, from
the g ending of smog, my ammamma’s lungs filled, God-ridden &
each breath a comma.
*
when my amma was born her body was comma-shaped, crescent. held in
her mother’s cracked palms. black-mouthed, a fetus-kissed God
swallowed her first vowels. each inhale exchanged with her mother’s
mother: you are only your lungs and the flesh they inhabit, the Gods
your mother taught you with her breath. one day, all her creation myths will
be lodged in an alveolus, commas will rest their heads like light-headed gods
on a blue mattress. hospital bedsheets like Ganga’s limbs lapping around,
humming to each monotone beep. I know amma never stopped loving God,
never stopped speaking with her full & open chest. how a mother can split
in two, cleave her ribcage, I watch two become four, eight, sixteen. no God,
no body. the doctor’s hymn: no.
*
in this country I am at the temple & knelt, chafed, kajal unspooling out
the statue’s fisheyes. praying for every breath in Delhi, the goddess
encircled. she traces every mother in my body’s fault lines, DNA unfolding
for every inherited bend, every inhalation. every atmosphere’s God-torn
dress in her hands. I am still a comma in this life, still a fetus for creation. the
comma-shaped mothers in my bloodline – a garland made of death. God,
can’t you see the train of brown bodies eclipsing the sky? in the time it
took to write this poem did you know a thousand more have boarded? God,
I am asking you forgive me. your children’s whirling incense in the clouds,
God, we cannot dry your tears any longer.
your holy air, I don’t know how much longer it can suffocate
when these prayers no longer spill like open wounds. God—
*
I am asking you. please. please. please.
Reflection
Climate change is not limited to its statistics, nor to a prophetic, syncopated hymn of numbers. We too often conceive climate change as a scientific phenomenon (which it is), while subtly dehumanizing its real effects. This poem was inspired by the smog crisis in urban India, where my extended family lives. A smoky, acrid haze can completely envelop these cities, in which the Air Quality Index (AQI) exceeds 500. Visible from space, these large-scale “smog seasons” have shortened the average Delhi resident’s life expectancy by approximately 11.9 years. This is not just a problem for the Delhi atmosphere, but rather a very real problem that exists in families, bloodlines, and the quiet hum of hospital bedrooms. Peaking each winter, air pollution brings on a climate-change-fueled respiratory crisis, so when discussing smog, we must address the perspectives of real families. I see poetry as the humanizer. When we write poems, we suffuse a portrait with emotion. In “smog ghazals in transposition,” I didn’t want to list off percentages – we know the statistical impact all too well. I wanted to enjoin religion in India with very real spikes (20%) in Delhi’s reported public health. Weaving in references to Hindu mythology, these ghazals configure God as crying. Hinduism proclaims God to be ubiquitous, so when smog chokes the air, we must ask for forgiveness. We must both ask for forgiveness and act in it. Sometimes, we only have our prayers – but environmental activism must not end with our hymns, but rather channel them into active, socially-relevant change. Even when God is crying in the sky, suffocating in the dense smog, we can still heal our climate.