Sing Up The Ruins by Jess Thayil
Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by promising new writers from all over the globe. This shortlisted poem by Jess Thayil explores one’s personal relationship to places — physical or metaphorical.
The 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open until 1 July 2024. Read the full guidelines and submit your work here.
So natural to want to know the names of places, or be given a few hints of where
the worst things happen. Even in poetry, everyone wants a place to land, even if
that place is another’s wound —
no one understands unless they’re told and this is
understandable. When a child gets beaten too often in a day for years on end,
she grows into this alert young shrew-thing who’s looking for ways to make
the beatings stop. And heck, she forgets to note the names of places –
no escape anyway from a place that allows a child to be terrorised,
every terrified child-woman knows this.
These places are everywhere. Does it matter where these things happen? Or
does it matter more that sometimes, someone somewhere cares less for the city,
the coordinates of locations on maps long enough to hold a hand? It means
so much to be chosen that our eyes ever ready for what will present
well before it presents somehow fail us. How we eat
ourselves up over not having known because
we should have known better. How our eyes were so busy looking
out for danger we didn’t know we were walking into danger’s belly:
how one’s body is one place and too many places at once. Some of us
unable to tarry too long in these towns, some of us bird-things always ready
for flight. The whole exhaustion of being ready all the time. So, if you hear
nothing of place, imagine a shrew-bird trying: so beaten, our places have a way
to go before they can utter their own names. Listen, listen anyway as we
