the pastel-pink wall looks
slyly
at the degradation of a colourless face,
somewhat shaken
before the rapture of satisfaction.
it is being brandished in this cold
that isn’t cold anymore,
not even in a half-witted lie
of tomorrow’s promise.
who wrote the fate of this hollow face
that it doesn’t fall off
after the eruption?
.
© Anmol Arora
A title with multiple connotations — a short 55-worded verse for Just One Word: Hollow at WTR.
Image source (Pink Sky Abstract by Nancy Merkle)
your hands caressing my throat
like it is your own,
gentle but rough,
little by little,
angling to my form and function,
fever-fervent and fastidious,
the calluses of your palm with a tight-
en-ing resolve, recovering spaces
between my hefty breaths,
the carotid pumping faster
for relinquishing
control over life-lines,
your eyes penetrating
my mind in an inebriated fullness,
the hourglass, broken,
the vagaries of time forgotten
in its absurd arbitrariness,
— i seek you, i need you, i want you —
i want the length of you against the girth
of me, the walls to be torn off, and
the electricity to wreck my anatomy —
my red lips chapped and bloodied to
your mouth’s savagery,
pick up my pieces, and claim the night
before it scatters to the winds,
and hum the dirge of this happening,
and moan as if this ache is all that is,
this wound is all that we carve
and draw from each other —
purple-bruised, volt-blue on a soft-brown skin
merging into the skin of all things,
submerging into a spell of an age-old
(lost) modus-operandi, for consumption,
— death, little by little,
living, by dying a little more,
and collapsing into heaps of
shins and skins, bones and beings,
and to forget that it ever existed —
this venerable malady of sex and grandiosity,
till loss is the only desire, the only particle
left of me.
© Anmol Arora 2018
For my Guest Post/Prompt at dVerse to be published later today; I am entreating the poets to explore the idea and theme of desire & sexuality in poetry, especially through the perspectives of gender and sexual minorities.
Also linking it up with the Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads.
Image source (Neck / Livingston, 1988 by Robert Mapplethorpe)
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is a much talked about book, narrating a teenage love story, where the two central characters are portrayed as misfits in their high school. The book tries to focus on certain issues related to race, gender roles and identity, with a certain focus on abusive and disruptive families.
In a few words, my views do not correspond with that of Mr. John Green (an author I admire) in his New York Times review of the book.
The book is set in 1986 in Omaha, Nebraska. To summarize, the book begins promisingly with a half-Korean teen boy, Park, who is fed up of the “morons” at the back of his school bus, when a new girl (dressed in some ways like a guy or rather as someone seeking attention), Eleanor, boards the bus. She fails to find a seat for herself and ends up sitting along side that “stupid Asian kid”. Sharing seats soon transforms into a friendship, and furthermore into a romantic relationship, as Park begins lending his books and starts making mix tapes for her.
Eleanor comes from a troubled family, living in fear in the shadow of her abusive stepfather. And thus, she begins a relationship with Park in private, with all her insecurities bound within. Thus begins long monologues which are supposed to make teenagers teary eyed and make them feel warm and fuzzy. With anecdotes like, “I want to eat his face”, “He is so pretty”, “She has freckles even on her lips”, etc., the book, without any attainable pace, moves on, until Eleanor finds out something terrible that she makes a decision to run away. Park comes to her rescue.
To add into the mysterious note (which this book is not supposed to create, but I would, so as to make the review a tad bit more interesting), what would happen next? Will her stepfather catch her? What would happen to the relationship? Will hearts be broken?
This book is appealing to the fans of authors like John Green and Sarah Dessen.
What I liked about the Book?
1. It is an easy read, and thus, I found it alright to read, paying only half my attention to what was going on.
What I didn’t like about the Book?
1. The entire setting and development is flawed. The narration, whether of school life or Park’s internal discord, whether of Eleanor’s tragic home or of the romantic development, never becomes concrete. An attribution to reality is what this book lacks in. And that is something important for YA and coming of age books. I would put this book in the category overflowing with Nicholas Sparks’ works.
2. The book fails in addressing social issues which it only strives to achieve. The racism is only referred to in sidelines. There is no difficulty faced by Park as such on being half-Korean. Bullying and abusive parents are the issues that might evoke a small response on the part of the reader.
3. The intimate scenes/passages in the book are quite cheesy. The writing is only half good. The back and forth point of view is distracting.
4. The ending is a little abrupt but that is alright. The problem is that it is done in such a way to make the readers swoon and eager to know what happens next. If the author actually wanted to keep the ending abstract, the book could have finished a few pages short of the actual ending. It was deliberately done to evoke discussions on social forums and to add into the charm that teenagers find in such books.
I would recommend fans of YA only, to read this book. This book is not for the readers, seeking a coming of age tale or an adult romance. This book is only good as long as you want a peaceful, simple and uncomplicated reading experience. This book just won’t make you think. And so, if you want a distraction from your thoughts, you might want to give it a try.
(My review might sound a little blunt but that is how I felt about the book. I failed to empathize with the characters. Many would call me heartless, to which I would reply that my heart works in correspondence with my mind.)
HA's Place 