Write a letter to your country of origin, the prompt advised
Dear country,
I begin
What are you? To call something a genesis, source, or start, where something derives or arises
In truth, that is my mother’s womb, isn’t it? Or generations before that? What is that territory? All warm, red, and flesh
Dependant on the unlikely chance
Of souls crossing continents whilst empires fall
Talk about land, they say
The earth and the soil
That I - a city girl with black thumbs cannot find
This other mother with roots to discover
But here I am - cut off, disconnected, and adrift
With only myths, caricatures, and stereotypes to fill my head of a land frozen in time by rituals that have become immutable
This flesh is our flesh, they proclaim
These eyes are our eyes
This tongue - that doesn’t speak their tongue - still binds. Am I to find
who I am here?
Among legends, fairy tales, and superstitions
Some deadly - others benign
What is this place to me? A source of guilt, salvation, or wonder. A backbeat that is subtle,
That plays louder for others as it grows with layered notes a derivative tune as it
Begins a familiar refrain anew, remixed, and reconstituted as do you
O country old of mine
Photo: Kaique Rocha (2016)
Poet Bio
Home?
Hong Kong
What is home to you?
Home is the smell of dried seafood, salty, humid sea air, a cacophony of sounds, whizzing red taxis, double-decker buses and bright lights.
Dena Kirpalani was born in Hong Kong. A child of the confluences of colonialism, she currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland. As a queer woman of colour, poetry has afforded her the opportunity to explore the liminal spaces between neat categories of identity. She is a PhD candidate. Her research focuses on international health law. She has at various points called London, Washington DC, Beijing, and Manila home.
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