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Literature, PoetryOctober 11, 2015

Prayer For Quick Dismemberment

 Hands in obsessive prayer - diptych, by Rabeya Jalil. Image courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery

Hands in obsessive prayer – diptych, by Rabeya Jalil. Image courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery

Smash open this city’s bones with your own two
hands—depleted as the autumn-night palash.

Smash open its stopped clocks, secret alleyways,
cul-de-sacs. This city of unfailing memories,

this city of over-abundance of wagging tongues
and languages: make them your own, read them apart.

Smash open all the foretellings, retellings
and untellings that this city can boast.

Smash open its red cement floors, rain-glittering
cobblestones, the balsam saplings on the highrise balconies.

This has nothing to do with how the walls
of these homes have sopped up the blood: blood

stains on the bed-sheets, blood stains on the pillow-cases,
the severed tongues buried inside the rice-pots.

Smash open its bronze martyrs on horseback,
its courthouses, police-stations.

Smash open its movie theaters, serpentine
lines blocking traffic, the gurgling-coughing trucks.

In this city that unfolds itself within
the folds of a thousand rupee bill,

a pencil thin girl is learning to redraw the silhouettes
of oceans in the architecture of sweetmeats.

Smash open its eucalyptus ribs, its putrescent
dog carcass, the Brittania jingle at dawn.

Smash open its tombstones, its abandoned
graveyards, the hollowness of its cicada-shells.

Smash them open. Spit them out. Then, rhyme them back again.

~ Nandini Dhar

 

Nandini Dhar is the author of the chapbook ‘Lullabies Are Barbed Wire Nations’ (Two of Cups Press, 2014). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Potomac Review, PANK, Los Angeles Review, Whiskey Island, Bitter Oleander, Cream City Review and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of the journal Elsewhere. Nandini hails from Kolkata, India, and divides her time between her hometown and Miami, Florida, where she works as an Assistant Professor of English at Florida International University.

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

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