Two postcard poems from “To Punani Camp”
Samodh Porawagamage
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My Antidote,
Can scorpions climb walls? Only that can explain another one in our kitchen today. This was a baby scorpion, so I escorted it to the garden with idala, covered it with an old aluminum tin, and even placed a stone on top. Didn’t take five minutes for the tin to fall! And the little thug was still creeping out of the fallen tin. This time, I hurled my prisoner to the other side of the stream. No wonder it’s called “gonussa,”the one capable of lifting horned deer. Do you remember the day a giant one fell out of your army boots and some devil possessed me to stomp it to a pulp with my feet? When I shrieked “No hospital,” you took me to the bed and monitored my temperature with forehead kisses. You risked desertion and stayed two more days. Later you said that episode made your love for me surpass human levels and I said it’s something I wouldn’t do for a human. At least, I was right about that monster not stinging me. Maybe it did, and I have too much poison in me that scorpion bites are a raindrop in the ocean.
Your Shoe-Checker
Notes: ‘Idala’ is the Sinhala word for coconut ekel broom.
Proud Father of Niduk,
Low whining noises came from the roof and a crow circled in an odd way. Your mother didn’t let me climb, but I used your ladder when she started her morning Lord Buddha worship. We have a few more mouths to feed. A cat has birthed five babies on ourhalf-doneroof and abandoned them. Naatu dog didn’t make any noise the whole night, so I don’t think a villager left them there. I started feeding them milk with oil lamp wicks and Niduk has taken over since then. Our son feeds them like handling gems. Sumana Akka said cats and dogs leaving their babies behind has become common of late. As much as I’m shocked by their mother abandoning them, I can’t but feel she left them because she’s starving herself. Then again, I’m bursting proud of our son and so should you be! We know it’s a matter of days before the kitten will succumb to their fate, but Niduk will learn from this that love can let live and delay death.
Niduk’s Proud Mother
About these poems: My book manuscript To Punani Camp, set during the Sri Lankan Civil War, comprises sent, unsent, and crossed-out postcards a soldier’s wife would write to her husband. Challenging a highly problematic literary and cinematic trend to glorify the civil war, this manuscript employs lyrical prose poetry vs standard prose; is narrated by a woman instead of a man; the military conflict and its aftermath take place off- stage vs onstage; and is a revisionist domestic epic vs a battlefield epic. As such, it attempts to recognize the unacknowledged services of women to the war campaign. It is also an attempt at capturing the rural Sinhala idiomatic expression in English and feminizing it. My most ambitious project yet, it deals with issues of poverty, underdevelopment, life in a border village, and the costs of war.
Samodh Porawagamage writes about the Sri Lankan Civil War, 2004 tsunami, poverty and underdevelopment, and colonial and imperial atrocities. becoming sam, selected by Jaswinder Bolina and published by Burnside Review Press, is his debut collection of poetry. He works at Hamilton College.
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