ATMA ADITI ACHUTA

by Rasma Haidri



U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hosted the International Women of Courage awards ceremony at the State Department March 8, 2013 in Washington, DC. In celebration of the 102nd International Women’s Day, the State Department honored nine women from around the world with the International Women of Courage Award, including the 23-year-old Indian woman known only as “Nirbhaya,” who died from injuries she received after being gang raped by six men last December in Delhi.


India is a woman
with bangles of gold, yellow silk
draped over a bronze arm
fingers elegant and long
at the end of a hand
lying in the dust, chopped
so the bangles fell off, one by one
like bloodstained fetters.

India is a woman
with slender long limbs
sheathed in folds of softest cotton
that lift and stretch and bend
as she steps into a rickshaw
where two men already seated
smile and wag their heads
and make room for her
between them.

India is a woman
partitioned by a retreating army
into East and West, Us and Them
split along the red rape line
where her blood, like a river,
would have carried sons into the world
and daughters.

India is a woman
who trusts the strength of men
put in position to protect her
but again and again she is flung
like pieces of meat between them
her golden brown body devoured, ripped
by their white gnashing teeth, smiling
like jackals.


Rasma Haidri is an American poet of South Asian descent living on the arctic seacoast of Norway. Besides previous publication in New Verse News, her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Canada and India.

BABES IN ARMS

by Rasma Haidri

CBC News photo of Munich mall shooting mourners superimposed over Munich Beer Hall photo from Muenchen.de.

The snap from Munich shows my daughter, her boyfriend,
a guy with glasses, all holding plastic beakers
of beer, half empty or half full (depending, right?)
She texts:         Nice today, no clouds!
                        Spending afternoon at music festival
                        in the neighbor village

I peer over her shoulder at the tiny crowd of bare legs,
shorts, tank tops
      Text:                BE CAREFUL!
then try to find a smiley that means: I don’t want to be one
of those mothers but baby, please
don’t go to a music festival in a Bavarian village,
not this week - I send the one with gritted teeth, maybe
that’s how I feel, follow it with pink hearts, just in case
   
      She texts:         Haha I will smiley heart kiss
New snap: crowd closer, I see eight and a half full
bodies, five times that many heads, myriad arms and legs,
it’s a mass of youth - always young people these days, at camp,
a mall, concert - how will she be careful? And why do the men
in this crowd have no faces? They block each other, look down,
turn away from the camera, all but that guy: black eyes, but no
backpack, or that one gazing at nothing, what he’s thinking?
I don’t know, I don’t even know what ‘careful’ means

Three thousand miles away, all I can do is practice
my tenet of blind faith
      Text:                HAVE A GREAT TIME!
add, as sacrament, the smiley with cool shades, scroll
with invented optimism to get the party hat and dancing senorita,
musical notes and microphone, and because she is still my daughter,
not one of the numbered in Munich last month, write       I LOVE YOU!

She sends two more snaps
                              Really nice here smiley heart kiss
                              I love you too!

and I see him: baseball cap, at the edge of the frame
or there, left center, wearing a fedora, dark beard, or at least
a five o’clock shadow, and he’s carrying something big and black,
a bag, and wearing a watch - or that guy staring straight at me
around the shoulder of a wild 1960s shirt, he’s got that
clean-shaven Anders Behring Breivik look

Ding, alert: in the final snap they are on the ground,
boyfriend, sister, my daughter between them, screaming
smile, wide surprised eyes, making that pose
all millennials make, the ones who grew up seeing themselves
on digital screens in fun Mountain Dew commercial scenes

I stare at the photos, it was just such a concert last week,
a village in Bavaria like this, a young man like him
or him, or that one under the tree -- there are so many
standing in groups or alone
looking down at the screens of their phones
as I do here, at my own

they are scanning the crowd for Pokemon
I am looking for the kid with the gun

Rasma Haidri grew up in Tennessee and makes her home on the arctic seacoast of Norway where she teaches British and American studies. Her poems and essays can be found in anthologies by among others Pudding House, Seal Press, Bayeux Arts, Marion Street Press, The Chicago Review Press and Grayson Books, and in literary journals such as Sycamore Review, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, Runes, Kalliope and I-70 Review. Her most recent poetry can be found in, Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Abuse and Oppression of Women.

THE MOTHER OF ONE OF THE BOYS LOST AT SEA ASKS HIM WHAT THE OCEAN WAS LIKE

by Rasma Haidri


And the boy says:

               After 10 days I said to the Ocean,
               Tell me your name so I will know where I am, but the Ocean replied,
               All water is this water. The ocean is one.

               After 20 days I said to the Ocean,
               You are trying to kill me, but I will drink the rain, and the Ocean replied,
               Rivers return from whence they came. The rain is ocean returning home.

               After 30 days a seabird landed and I said to the Ocean,
               Is this another one of your jokes? The Ocean replied,
               I have many shapes of bird or fish or boy. Did you think I was water?

               After 40 days I said to the Ocean,
               I will die now and be gone. The Ocean replied,
               To the one being born it appears the world is coming to an end.

               After 50 days I said to the Ocean,
               There is no place where this water does not belong, and the Ocean said,
               You will never go out of the ocean that is you.

The boy’s weeping mother holds him close.
He knows her tears are ocean.


Rasma Haidri is an American writer living on the arctic coast of Norway. 
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CREDO

by Rasma Haidri

“At least 12 were killed in an attack at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Four cartoonists are among the dead, including editor and cartoonist Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier, seen here defiantly holding one of the magazine’s covers. The magazine was fire-bombed in 2011 for publishing a cartoon of Muhammad and is know for its provocative satire. The Guardian has live updates here of developing events.” --Ann Telnaes, editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post, 7 January 2015.

I believe in One Art
Father of Cartoon
Begotten of the Pen Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth
I believe in Drawings
Visible and Invisible
Born not made
Being of one Substance
The Ink, the Pen and the Lead
I believe that Art,
Giver of Life, Begotten of man
Came and dwelt among us
Suffered and was buried
So the multitudes would rise
Take up Arms of Pens,
Draw Cartoons a Thousandfold
In world without end.


Rasma Haidri grew up in Tennessee and now lives in the Norwegian arctic where she is a newspaper columnist, textbook writer and teacher. Her poems and essays have been widely published and are forthcoming in Songs for a Passbook Torch, an anthology of poems about Nelson Mandela and Veils, Halos and Shackles, an anthology about violence towards women.

STICKS & STONES WILL MAKE A WAR & NAMES WILL ALWAYS HURT ME

by Rasma Haidri


I can see them now
my children's grandchildren's children
their heads bowed over history books
(or screens or holograms or whatever
the state-of-the-art futurorama schoolroom will offer)
scoffing at what they read:
that a cartoon drawing started it all
first in a Danish newspaper
then copycatted in a Norwegian one
then again in a Swedish one
(nah nah boo boo
we'll draw Mohammed
as a pig or a dog or a bomb if we want to
freedom of speech, of the press
and you can't do us do-do)

They will shake their heads at us
the way we shook ours at our own grandparents
who did nothing to stop Hitler

Because when the offences grew
and men raged full fury in the streets
and curbed their cabs in protest
and swaddled their young in tripwire
and sent their priests to demand apology
the Swedish paper that printed the drawing
did not say Sorry
not even Sorry you can't take a joke
or Sorry you overreacted                      

No, no, no my great great great great grandchildren
it is true what your books say came next:
that in week 10 of 2010
ALL the newspapers of Sweden printed the drawings

They called it solidarity
the way the weak join the bully on the playground
to get in on being mean while the mean is getting good

America had already taken Iraq
and Afghanistan
and Pakistan
and even though Israel had not yet taken Iran
we were fighting each other in the streets
and fuelling the fire in our schools
with hijabs and skullcaps
and crucifixes on chains

You may well shake your heads over what you read
that we did nothing
as fear grew and festered all around
that it started with a cartoon
and the rest was history


Rasma Haidri is an American writer of South Asian and Norwegian descent who grew up in Tennessee, spent childhood summers in Manhattan, studied in Wisconsin and lived in France and Hawaii before settling down on the arctic coast of Norway where she currently lives with her daughter and domestic partner. Her poetry and essays have appeared in many literary journals including Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Kalliope, Fine Madness, Runes and Third Genre. In addition, her writing has been widely anthologized in collections from publishing houses such as Seal Press, Bayeux Arts, Pudding House, Marion Street Press, Bluechrome, Grayson Books, and Chicago Review Press. She co-authored the textbook International Focus (Gyldendal, 2007) for the Norwegian National Curriculum upper secondary course in international and cross-cultural English. Her most recent work appears in Not a Muse (Haven Books, 2009), Eating Her Wedding Dress (Ragged Sky Press, 2009) and Lavanderia (City Works Press, 2009). Among recognitions for her writing are the Southern Women Writers Association emerging writer award in creative non-fiction, the Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Letters & Science poetry award, finalist in the Elinore Benedict Prize in Poetry and the Barry Hannah prize for fiction, and a fiction residency scholarship at Vermont Studio Center.
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WE BELIEVE IN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, YOU KNOW

(but, being Heathens, you may not understand the meaning of that)


by Rasma Haidri Sjøvoll


In Norway twenty years ago, The Life of Brian
was considered too dangerous
(wait, that’s not quite correct
let’s say it like it was)
too blasphemous
to be allowed into the country
so we had to flee into Sweden
to see what was so funny.

We learned to laugh,
you might say we lightened up,
so the censors bravely opened the gates
and let Brian through
for serious scrutiny
by viewers over the age of 18
though no subtitles were allowed
(full comprehension was still dangerous).

We knew to keep the children safe.
Anyone under the age of maturity
would surely be corrupted and doomed to
H-E-DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS
for their ensuing misconception
of the death, life and not least conception
of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

It was serious business,
this monitoring of the media’s ability to rock
the foundation of our Judaeo-Christian heritage
as if our cornerstone of faith
would not withstand Monty Python’s wisecracks.

Twenty-five years later any eleven year old
(proof of age required) can rent The Life of Brian
at the corner kiosk, so liberal and enlightened
have we become, so open, so understanding,
so (let’s say it) worldly, even cosmopolitan,
multi-cultural, non-denominational

that we have no tolerance whatsoever
for religious paranoia
and all those frowning Imams (ever notice how they always frown?)
who can’t even take a joke.


Rasma Haidri Sjøvoll is an American writer living on the Arctic seacoast of Norway. Her poems and essays have appeared in literary journals including Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, Ice Floe and Kalliope, and been widely anthologized, most recently in Waking up American: Coming of Age Biculturally (Seal Press 2005) and Only the Sea Keeps, (Bayeux Arts 2005). She won the 2005 Southern Women Writer’s emerging writer award in creative non-fiction and the 2005 Mandy Poetry Prize.

THANKS GIVING

With deep appreciation and regard for the hundreds of poets whose work has appeared here this year, The New Verse News is proud to announce that it has nominated the following poems from its pages:

1. For the Sundress Publications Best of the Net 2010 Awards:

RUBBLE DREAM by Mary Krane Derr
JIHADJANE by Anne Harding Woodworth
STICKS AND STONES WILL MAKE A WAR. . . by Rasma Haidri
FIFTY FOOT OAK by Laura Rodley

2. For the Dzanc Books Best of the Web 2011 Awards:

PETER KINLOCH TO HIS FIANCÉE by Molly Meacham
TRACKING THE HURRICANE by W.F. Lantry
ABRACADABRA by James Penha

3. For The Pushcart Prize 2011:

DIEGO RIVERA’S DEEP WATER HORIZON by Alan Catlin
SOMETHING FOR HARVEY by Jen Hinton
BREAKING OF BREAD: ANDREI VOZNESENSKY by Richard Ilnicki
LABOR DAY 2010 by Lillian Baker Kennedy
RESCUE FROM THE DEPTHS by J. D. Mackenzie
LEEWARD by Elizabeth Swados

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Editor's Note: Mary K. Derr hopes her nominated poem will encourage readers to remember that Haitians still need help. She suggests donations to  Food for the Poor  and Médecins Sans Frontières.

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