Issue One, Poets of Columbia
Columbia Poetry Society
edited and designed by Karen Ng
August 2024
(from the editor)
Thank you to my parents, my grandparents, the people of Hong Kong, my friends especially the ones who dutifully attended society readings on Furnald Lawn or atop the Low Steps, and even in the pouring rain my idealised image of the Beats, Mary Oliver, Bei Dao, Ruth Padel, Edward Said, his sixth floor reading room, the J-school, John Bennet, my friends at King’s Poetry Society, the members of the Columbia Poetry Society (this one!), and every poet who wrote so beautifully for this magazine. Here’s to the next one.
THANK YOU
This society was founded in February, 2022 for Columbia student & alumni poets (and readers of poetry) to gather and read together.
Shabbir Agha
Karen Ng
Maha Idrees
Isabella Redivo
Bailey Caras
Sourya Kakarla
Gorden Yin
Jayshawn Lee
Izzy McIlvaine
Cody Ares Baynori
Maria de los Angeles Villarreal
Bailey Caras
Karen Ng
Angela Alissa Keele
Lee
'URS (WEDDING) 'URS (WEDDING) 'URS (WEDDING)
Shabbir Agha Abbas
Death come for me, I do not resist.
For in His solitude I will finally exist.
Hurry! Bury me in an unmarked grave,
A name undeserving of this lowly slave.
I shall vanish from this forsaken place.
Smash the tombstone! Grant me this disgrace.
Without a name I was born and will return.
Let me be the moth in the candle I shall burn.
Alas! Without me there is only Him, and without Him everything is dim.
Rejoice on my departure, and prepare a feast.
Marriage, not a janaza! Dead but not deceased.
*A janaza is a funeral
then again then again
I cry out a cloud weaving tender fingers still aglow with the kindled flashes of home. My bedroom walls come to me in dreams. New shivers spill across me and I carry myself in pieces to the sun as names enter and rush around me; these quiet invasive species that scatter across my wall and spread like opened doors at my feet. And I drop them for new hands. These are tender. Careless, knowing wanton gazes go past and linger. What can come of anything yet?
Submerged in water; Another battle with my brother, ‘I can hold my breath the longest!’
The pain was born in the beating core, Splicing the mute pilgrim, Gripping at tendons, Taking root, Becoming unbearable.
The nastaliq runes of grandfather’s love letters, Flow into the years, As would the rivers of my land; Down the delta of a boundless forgetting.
Divorcios Rapidos!
Posters blare at the bend of my street, My Urdu swims unspoken, Cornered by a language I don’t speak.
O Heer! Your songs remain unsung, Engulfed, in this land of quick endings.
Memory spins its gossamer threads, And I remember the dichotomy of breathing, Gulping in the air, Laughing in the throes of Life. Gulping at the air; In vain–Throat fettered in rough hands.
Dichotomy of
Breath
Heart under the Hudson, A daughter of her soil, uprooted; Immersed in new silt.
The terrible beauty of self-exile, Is to finally breathe free, Yet drown in this embodied, breathless ache; Its heady scent – like moist jasmine, After the Monsoon.
—Maha Idrees
Isabella Redivo
shall outlive this i shall outlive this
i shall outlive this
Sheets
by Bailey Caras
Once folded, a sheet Of paper
Will never be the same, but my bedsheets regain their form
Molded to the frame instead of your figure.
I figured out more from a sheet of glass than a spreadsheet, looking out windows held up by concrete.
I’ve concretely discerned
These sheets are cemented with words
Represented in scribbles
Hard to unlearn Stapled sheets
Piles of medical bills
Built into a system that kills character and breeds violence.
These sheets are loved Hated. Crumpled. Read. Burned
Before the pines can grow again.
holy nature
As the swinging trees
Jive to the bustling breeze
Painting a pristine picture
The realization rains upon me
Blinded by bitter bullshit
I’ve missed the harmonies
Hummed in holy nature
(Sourya Kakarla)
Gorden Yin
What mercy has allowed me the slow prayer of liquid-sage, a ceramic baptism of dry-blossomed buds soaked tender?
Drown me in the herb-water humorous irony since my nephew declares what is tea but hot leaf juice by stovetop?
His naive palette and philosophy and ethic disdain for transformation
Does he not see what happens between the boiling-violence when something else is left at the end?
You know my hands knew war too well once the opposite of salvation
I’ve incensed for another son when I was not worthy of protecting my own
Alchemy by humble flame. An even burn.
The cocoons cascade into a new world how waterfalls make their way to new streams
With winged new bodies they eat leaves from the vine and their old caskets worship gravity while falling so slow with cloaked patterns mimicking small countries colonial shattering like tiny fragile shells blink and miss the clad legacy imperial drifting in the foam
So what ablution parches thirst & sin then names me worthy of healing?
When a nation is prone to drowning do we still cast all that lives there waterside anyway?
What water is holy but the steaming I purify
A single degree between false-simmer and a seething brew
Can others be graced with such detail?
What redemption unattainable for my niece found me instead?
When I, too, have a Zuko complex
My eyes burned & blind to a false honor
I chased for their healing with my hands
I, too, have danced with dragons with the faces of men who breathe fire
Parenting is an easy way to leave one wounded after birth—after all
I made Ba Sing Se sing songs of me.
I slit the throats of earthbenders and buried them in their own elements
Is that not a type of mercy?
Is that why I wake daily and anoint my insides with liquid fire?
if she bleeds / she can breed
he said as i smiled with a mouth still speckled with baby teeth, clutching legos in the tiny hands where my 11-year-old self foolishly thought i held the whole world.
Izzy McIlvaine
Hellish Perfection
Cody Ares Baynori
You, forever compared to Lady Di and the boys of Welton, frustrate me. With brushed teeth, many glasses of water, and a love for the sunny day.
The one who lives the very life I have been denied; you stun me. The presence of beautiful testosterone, crisp, lightened hair, and a clear mind.
My life is ruined because it gets compared to yours.
I, Mariposa
Maria de los Angeles Villarreal
migratory wind-flowers
voyage midday from faraway lands and found us in the way
tailed cecropias, viceroys and california sisters
tiny garden of dreams
we offer a temporary home in our wings
eastern tigers, pipevines and black swallowtails
sweet nectar in my ear they crave flutters of wonder
hackberrys, pavons, and silver emperors
journey their petal-wings to sights unseen
i’m a mariposa and you’re my monarca
longing for their return where may the butterflies be?
You Are What You Love You Are What You Love
by Bailey Caras
They say patience is a virtue, And virtue is inversely proportional to law.
So we wait for the right moments.
Our faith steadfast
Though there’s a voice that whimpers.
Telling us truths, Are they transactional or conditional? You wonder if they are conditional. So we conform to the laws of nature. Our hope well placed
Though there’s a system that hinders.
This has to be learned. Soon thoughts and love become habitual.
So we acquire information to help us survive. Our knowledge growing
Though there’s unrest that lingers.
Feelings can get lost, Patience won’t undo our rituals.
So we must decide if they’re worth saving. Our questions unanswered
Though there’s love that whispers.
This time, I won't let it slip through my fingers.
Touya
Karen Ng
From the corner of my eye
I take out the stars crush each new flame into a thousand embers Purple pits and spoiled stitches answer the glare, repeat the blank stare I keep stomp out each trace of contested traits Swarm the gleam in my own eye and spit out the sight Open the shrine sever that plaque and burn me. Somewhere
I am a star bent in the alley way above the boy crying as the lights were blown out at his feet. Recite, recite recite the plan you had for me Keep still. Keep me somewhere I can burn you somewhere dim candles can remind you of my remains
Then leave out that sharp edge, those tears shred me like a contract and skin the thread unfurling from my neck
Drop dead on the earth behind me. Hold my hand until I slip on the busted batteries crawling from the torch before I go out look at me
your name smells like porches of rain, a wooden stage for bare feet, dancing to whispers of embrace. speak gently into me a breath too sharp would bare naked this tree. there was safety in your name, sun-grown freckles and eyes of soft ease. call golden hour out for light to see life concealed, alone for your eyes.
By Any Other Name but Yours
Angela Alissa Keele
JAYSHAWN LEE
Notes On Summer: Hamilton Heights
For real for real / we are just some sober-sunned boys / boys who thirst for light / from the skies daily sweat / & its dry electromagnetic precipitate / I miss it / during its annual three-quarters absence / Summer / all those burnt out days / heat & Riverbank Park about us / sweating through its beauty / how bright it gets / and stays long overdue into the evening / like when we skipped our curfews / and were left with skin / the tint of sunrise over water / you could see the same shade over the bend of 145th and Broadway’ s hillsudden drop / when Broadway loses its name and becomes another avenue / all vibrant yet somehow disappearing / the same necromancy late September brings when pools close / and missed jump shots have the alibi of a windy season / how we miss summers / how it would give to us in ways harsh-hot & we still wouldn’t / dehydrate or perish or putrefy / Let us be hot again / Turn the five boroughs into / the confluence of the magic / that happens when chuckles gather & amass folks / & turns the concrete walkways into comedy clubs and music from the block / is the natural ambiance here / lurking the way Gwendolyn Brooks saw it / I miss the way / July makes a bottle’ s captive / escape & fall slow / from its outer layer / drips closer to where / I may lie if not for / sprinklers liberated / mid-block somewhere music yonders / in Hamilton Heights / where men line up by the dimes to catch smoke the way I catch air / near the person who scoops flavors / & everyone got a name for it / coco / mango / cherry / coquito / Icees / Either way somehow the frio-frio’ s fruit taste is there in shard-form / crystal-remnants of island flavors and July / makes way / makes close to a greater time winter could only wish to be yet / refuses to strip its frost-agape mouth for miles / for a minor moment in itself / we can enjoy in our mouths / its three month eternity / that June to August sanctuary / where we went about for hours / the other days of the year behind us / out of mind / all in drought / running about hydrating sidewalks with drenched parts of myself / hoping you ’d never end /
Poets of Columbia
ISSUE ONE BY THE COLUMBIA POETRY SOCIETY