Global Poetry Series: Yasmeen Najmi

I knew New Mexican Yasmeen first as somebody who loved Rio Grande and her forestland, the Bosque and who cared deeply about conservation. Later on I found out that her dad was from Murshidabad, West Bengal and her mother was an Italian. In a sense, she has lived on the borders of various identities which makes her poems ever-more delicious.
She self-published a poetry chapbook in 2004 titled Ankh, the Hindi word for "eye." She's working on a second featuring poetry and photography inspired by Main Streets created by the railroad in small New Mexico towns where she passed many happy hours strolling and chatting with 80-year-olds and eating ice cream.  Her poems appear in several zines, blogs and the anthologies The Stark Electric Space, Adobe Walls and Fixed and Free Poetry.  An environmental planner and public servant, her poetry often reflects her deep connections to the ecology and cultures of the Rio Grande.  In her not so free time, you can find her not so aimlessly wandering the river forest and acequias (irrigation canals) and, someday soon, singing and playing the accordion at parties.
I have followed her work for long and it is my pleasure to share my joy with all of you!

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The Tipping Point

I am only half of you
half of your subcontinent skin
my autumn-stained hair
half your ink and girth

my stories are served to me
on small plates
my stories are only half of yours

the low hum of your words
lifts and tilts in quiet waves
through the savanna of your chest
the steeped air swoons cardamom
and I am running with you
in mud washed streets
your grandmother's fried puri crunches
then fills the mouth in oily plumes
the way my grandmother's surely must have tasted

my stories are the Other castes
that wait outside the temple
shout devotion at stone to be embraced by echo
in the flickering tango of shadows
we enter
fold our bodies and breath into maternal contours
shell cracked to source
rifts in ancient masonry
cull the heat of severance

fingers of moon slip between
window bars
the arcs of twisted limbs
and I imagine that your stories are mine.