Your rage is pomegranates spilling open on ice, is the flute’s thin silver seam, is a volcano spitting rivulets of fire to wash clean these corrupt lands. Your rage is solidarity before after & during the hashtag. Your rage is the angel of karma before after & during the video. Your rage throbs tight in your chest against symbologies of sticks & stones & chokes that break ligament & bone. Your rage is the fulcrum of your desire, chimaerae busting out of cages, heart-sparks flying. Your rage gets shit done & it is no joke. Your rage is the luminous gold truth of sunrise, what you sit with long enough to dissolve your fear. Your rage is a checkmate to your compromise. Your rage is heat from a magnifying glass, focused, bursting into flame. Your rage is a cool blue spotlight circling the empty stage. Your rage is the dog who won’t lie down for the wrong master, fierce hen who won’t be moved till her brood is hatched, moth who unbinds her cocoon & lifts her body toward light. Your rage is a lesson & you learn it as you breathe. Your rage is this holy sword slicing through stone walls. Your rage is a sentence that says what it must, full-stop. Your rage is our dream of a sweeter brighter world. Your rage is this oar treading the sea to steer this ship this gorgeous fucking hot mess goddamn revolution.
Note: The title is a line from “Cruelty” by Namdeo Dhasal, poet and founder of the Dalit Panther movement.
Added: Thursday, January 12, 2017 / From "Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky," (Jacar Press, 2016). Used with permission.
Photo by Bob Hsiang.
Minal Hajratwala is a poet, publisher, author, and writing coach/founder of Write Like a Unicorn. Her collection Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment was published in 2014 by The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective. Her nonfiction epic Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents won four literary awards, and she is the editor of a groundbreaking anthology, Out! Stories from the New Queer India. Visit her website for more information.
