Hi everyone!

2022 was wild. In so many unfamiliar ways. I was asked in many ‘gatherings’ that I have been a part of since my return from a very adventurous trip down south in Dec that how my winter vacation was, and it was a word for me- ‘retreat’ and three, ‘The Watering Hole’. If you wanted an essay, you subscribed to this newsletter. And so here we go. In bits and pieces, as always. In a manic, I tell you but also what.

The things I learned and discovered at The Watering Hole were absolutely bonkers for a girl from Bihar. The kind of diversity (all POC) it had and the kind of wisdom, tips, and workshops we underwent—I say underwent because I felt like a part of my brain was lobotomized before I met my kindred spirits, who made me double up in less than a week. A week that shall not be forgotten in the annals of learning and bonding. I wrote haikus like my parallel universe in Wiachin would. I wrote many golden shovels, never dreaming that I would be doing one on Vikram Seth’s All those who sleep tonight (one of my favorite poems ever) in McCormick County, which is a white county, and I was a brown girl writing poems with my black sisters and brothers. We laughed, we cried, we wrote, we slammed, and we all taught each other a lot. A lot.

Some of the people that I met and admired were those who brought us all together, Candace Wiley, a woman of steel. Dasan Ahanu (Chair), Jay Ward (Vice Chair), Angelo "Eyeambic" Geter (Secretary), Joyce Rose-Harris (Community Relations), Rahsaan Louris, and all the other facilitators are some of the best people I have come to know.

I lived in a cabin in the middle of a forest park in the southern wilderness of the USA, traversing the wildlands with Lydia (someone whom I had briefly known before), and the Detroit gal Catalina was the perfect post-Christmas present to wind up the year in the wilderness of South Carolina’s Hickory Knob State Park and Resort.

I met some amazing people (some I had only known virtually and would have never crossed paths with, and that thought makes me shudder), and that takeaway was the biggest giveaway of 2022. My soul was as high as a fly at the end of the year, cocooned in the presence of poets who knew what it took and what it had to be. The core purpose is to cultivate and inspire kinship between poets of color from all spoken and written traditions, thus creating a tribe with a mutual focus on poetics and craft-building.

The Watering Hole was created as a Facebook group by fellows of the Cave Canem South Workshops in 2009 and 2010. If you are a poet at a stage where you need a tribe, apply for The Tribe of Your Life. Even if not this, I hope you all have the opportunity to engage in various forms of education and learning. There is no one right way to do anything in life. I always feel like telling myself, again and again, that I am here unbeknownst to me. I don’t know where I will be. But, I like you, wish it to be fruitful and happy.

(!!!!!!)

Few things move more quickly than when you are motivated by something so good (!!!!!!)

Nagas

I.

The Nagas are Shaivite sadhus

who go around naked

or in loinclothes.

They cover themselves with ashes

from funeral pyres.

They resemble Rastafarians

in that they wear their hair

long and matted in a style

similar to dreadlocks

and smoke copious quantities

of hashish in chillums.

They arm themselves

with tridents and with

long knives, like ratchets

or machetes.

It was these tridents

that prodded the Buddhists

out of India.

They beg and often extort alms

from householders or passersby.

Most of them are celibate.

My friend the Swami

once saw a Naga

string his cock

between two wooden blocks

and then hammer the top block

down again and again

as though he meant

to pulverize himself

and in that way

diminsh sexual desire.

Mahādevī, a Vīrasaiva

bhakta saint,

was married to Shiva

like a nun.

All her songs

are about her

search for him.

She wandered around

twelfth-century India

naked, covered only

in her tresses,

like Lady Godiva.

She was of surpassing beauty,

and men pursued her.

Somehow she eluded them.

Finally, she was forced

into a marriage

with Kaúsika, the king.

But she escaped

to Srīsaila,

the holy mountain,

and died in a state

of god-intoxication

or oneness-with-Shiva.

She was 25.

II.

I think that Jesus was mad

when he cast the money-changers

out of the temple. The Johannine Gospel

places the incident at the beginning

of His ministry, but I believe the

Synoptics are correct, and it happened

only days before the Passion.

I don’t think He started a riot

just because they were selling some pigeons.

I think that Jesus was mad

because He didn’t want to leave

His own sweet human body

He knew that they were going to

torture Him to death,

but He had no idea

what the Resurrection Body would be like,

or how terrible it might be

to live in eternity.

He was afraid.

He thought the world was coming

to an end in a few years.

He was wrong about that.

He loved His human body.

He wanted things to stay the same.

I don’t think He knew

that He’d get to stay

around for a while

after the Resurrection,

and eat the honeycomb,

and cook some fish,

and walk on the road again

for miles in the dust,

explaining the Scriptures,

appearing and disappearing,

shoving Thomas’s hand

into the hole in His side.

Iowa City

for Tom Gallo (1951–1986)

I.

I remember punching

Larry Roe in the head

that time he came at me swinging.

We both had the same girlfriend, Judy Hilton.

He went down with blood gushing.

I had a longer reach

and he was blind drunk.

It was a shameful incident

and Dan Hottel came downstairs

and made fun of Larry.

And Dan died that year from whiskey and heroin.

I was Judy’s last boyfriend

and then I stole Barbara from Raymond

and I was her last boyfriend.

It was that year, I guess,

that a lot of girls went gay on us.

Well, Bill Larson said

that he’d fucked Judy

and I knew it was true

but it was much later

when he knocked me down

and kicked me in the head

with a pointy-toed cowboy boot

and I rolled against the wall

like a log out cold

and woke up the next morning

feeling just fine

and I still maintain that he

(Bill Larson)

was not well read.

And that winter John Haydon

came home drunk

and locked out, he fell down,

and slept and froze

right to the porch.

II.

And Hope followed me out from New Haven,

she hitched a ride with a truck driver.

Hope Payne was her name

I’m not making any of this up.

I used to say no hope

and lots of pain

and I didn’t want her there.

Well, R. G. had mushrooms

and I ate a whole bag

and drank a quart of George Dickel

and Hope and I fought and

fought and I ended up

trying to strangle her

and she ran out.

Well, I drank more

and the mushrooms came on

and I started crying uncontrollably

and I went out

and stamped through the snow

around and around for hours

crying “Hope! Hope! Hope!”

She was with you, Tom Gallo

and she tried to fuck you

I know she did

and it would have been fine

but you were afraid of hurting anybody

and you were loyal to me

and now you are dead

from vodka and heroin, Tom.

Fruit, as it is

She who paints

draws jackfruits

on the branches of the jackfruit tree

and on the roots

just as they are,

not fashioned as breasts on the female trunk

Not as split body parts

as openings and wounds

but

as if two minutes ago

Mother had

cut it in two with a knife

and laid it on the bare floor

Its skin, innards,

flesh, seeds,

the slippery seed-husks

none of them drawn separately

The body fully built in thorns

the burden a woman straightening herself bears.

The sticky stain

that refuses to be erased –

the seed that falls at the foot of the jackfruit tree

that rots and sprouts –

the smell that spreads all around –

Women who do not paint –

women with babies growing inside their bellies –

when they look,

they see fruits

for real,

stuck to the jackfruit tree trunk.

© Translation: 2010,C.S. Venkiteswaran- Anitha Thampi

I am that CAT with the 10 cool links

1. A cool cat tool for dyslexia in a world of MS Word for pro everything

2. Boston Public Library end year list (I visited the Cambridge public library and not this one but I wish to, someday)

3. Read as many chapbooks as you want for free! The McGill Library's Chapbook Collection contains over nine hundred British and American chapbooks published in the 18th and 19th centuries.

4. 536-was-worst-year-be-alive

5. A rare interview of Vikram Seth, a writer I wish to study :)

6. Seshadri’s old interview in The New Yorker about the creative process and the poets who have influenced him the most

7. How the Earth’s inner core affects weather and climate events?

8. 21 Things That Are Harder Than Getting into Harvard

9. A Guide To Cannabinoids

10. An experienced junkie?

Lovers part, from the tangle warm Of gentle bodies under quilt And crack the icy water to the face — from 'Kyoto: March' by Gary Snyder

Wrote this letter listening to many songs but this was a constant.

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