Author: Mahvash K. M.
I consider myself somewhat of a serial corporate rut absconder because a sabbatical that was to last a year, has turned to eight, and I still see no end in sight. Before that, I worked in the Financial Services Industry. When I’m not writing, I’m fussing in my head, over ideologies of social justice and equality, with superhero twists! My stories and poems have appeared in The Rumen, Sequoia Speaks, Recesses, Every Day Fiction, Blaze Vox and Double Speak magazines. My poem, “Veins” was long listed in the Plough 2023 poetry competition.
Books:
The Girl with the Paisley Dupatta - (short stories)
Shimmering Scraps of Poetry and Madness - (Poetry and essays)
Curious Animals and Quirky Creatures - (Children’s Series)
https://www.facebook.com/Mahvash.Moht/
VERSE | SWEET DREAMS
Birthed from the soul haunting paintings and videos of Palestinian artists and vloggers.
You want to know
If I sleep?
I don’t anymore, not normally
But when I do
When my eyeballs roll back in my head
From exhaustion and from dread
I dream
I’m splayed across
Broken stones
And clay begotten slivered bricks
Shattered bones
And severed heads
Skin like parchment
Bomb-buoyed, paper-thin
Every pore missile-singed
Flying in the wind
Up, up into the sky
I send a prayer with my eyes
I lift a leg and scrutinise
The other one
It lies unsprung, unsung, wrung
From its muscles and ligaments
It lies in the dust
The dust is whipped into a storm
It brings along
The smell of death
Of rocket-burnt flesh
Bloody, fear-soaked it’s a mesh
It clings to me
I can hear
Each howling soul
As it holds me close
I let it grip me as it curls
Into my ears as they bleed
Quietly so silently
Tenderly, bedecking me
My lobes dripping in rubies
There is no sound anymore
My wings unfurl I float away
As they gently gently weep
The tired lifeblood out of me.
VERSE | DON’T FORGET
I draw so you remember
What happened in October
Of 2023
And November and December
and January and February
And on and on in 2024 and 2025
I draw because I’m still alive
I stand where the stricken
Lie dead or dying in the rocks
Once homes and hospitals
I stand
And I draw so you remember
And should I lose my hands
I will still paint
The ravaged spaces that I see
I’ll paint them with my feet
I’ll sit
With my reds and greys amid
Strewn limbs and death debris
A paintbrush in my toes
And should I lose my legs
One of them or both
And if I can draw a breath
I’ll still draw the faces
Of the living and the dead
I’ll etch them with my eyes
Into the watching skies
I’ll engrave them in the heavens
Where angels wait to greet
All of me and mine
We, the flowers of Palestine
I’ll draw, I’ll paint, I’ll etch
Until my dying breath
So that you can always see
So that you don’t forget.
VERSE | IT HAS TO BE
They speak and words
Fumble from mouths
That wish that they
Were speaking out
Of something else
Of the obvious
It has to be
It has to be
Humanity has otherwise
Lost its wings
Its feathers shorn
By barbs and stings
From treacherous planes
Rockets blazing
By the ugly might
Of vetoing
Might it be
Those hearts still beat
To other things
Resembling, faintly even
An evenness, a balancing
Of fickle acts, good intentions
For a time, lost in a storm
Treacherous, unsteadying
They speak and words
Come stumbling out
Of throats that lie
In tender flesh
Fleshing out sweeter things
Like hearts that throb
On other planes
And blood that sings
Of vital things
Could it be those
Soul-stirring thoughts
Have lost their way
In heart’s hollow
They pulsate
Knock-knocking
On its ribs
It has to be
It has to be.
VERSE | THE PAUSE
You tell me I should have known
Better than to trust another
With tender things
Like the blood reveling warm within
Sweet imaginings
You tell me I should have seen
The telltale clues in between
The spaces where I had wrapped
My heart around someone, rapt
In the throes of so much joy
I beamed, I glowed for months on end
You remind me now again
I look at you and I smile
Sometimes silence golden and still
Is all that is needed to fill
The pause waiting to receive
Contentions, remonstrations, a speech
I let that moment pass me by
Bloated with pent up intrigue
Silence exquisite, shimmering
Now takes me in its calm embrace
I had loved with all my heart
No regrets, no shame, no blame
My quietness golden and still
Now safekeeps memories in that space.
VERSE | THROUGH THEIR EYES
She sits there selling bangles
Set up in a wicker basket
Some laid down on the grass
Every now and then she gently
Sweeps off the dust that spreads thinly
From teeming feet that hurry past
Barely slowing near the woman
Sitting on her haunches hoping
For someone to slow down, to pause
Her concave belly almost touching
The basket that is tugging
The life blood from her womb
Every time that she moves
Spilling it in little driblets
Onto its precious load
The maternal bond of glass and blood
Unremitting, never enough
As she sits car-caressing
Sometimes fretting, sometimes fussing
Rearranging, caring, loving
Always loving, always loving
A tender smile hov-hovering
Around her tired mouth
She is umbilical-corded
To her treasures
Resting in their bed of wicker
Willing them to cleave their way
Into the hearts of passersby
Willing them to shine so bright
That it brings tears to her eyes
The boundless world of plenty
In those bangles by her side
Behind her lie two little heads
Heat-numbed and stupefied
Little thumbs in little mouths
Doing their best to pacify
The endless hunger in their bellies
Matured and rarefied
Over lifetimes spent behind
Their mother as she hums
Little songs of gentle rain
On golden fields of wheat and rye
Watching their little sisters
Take all their mother’s time
Resting in their basket
They tinkle and they wink
They watch their little sisters
Gleaming, laughing in delight
Suckling on the joyfulness
That streams from their mother’s eyes.
VERSE | TENDER ACHE
There’s a sweet pain in my chest
A bloom of soft memories in my head
They hold hands for a time
Making me smile for a little while
Charging then to pierce my eyes
Awkward friends
This ache in my ribs
And these recollections
They make me weep
And yet all the while
Hugging each atom of my being
Places and spaces inside of me
Phantom-greyed, blue-bruised, bleak
Stark in the darkness of old scars and stings
Fledgling losses, crushed hearts and things
They hold them close the vital lot
Nostalgia and loss begot
I have a tender-sweet ache in my chest
I wait for my pin-pricked eyes to attest
To love that was gentle, to the fierce kind
Rapt in reminiscence they fill my mind.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 