{"id":10735,"date":"2020-08-17T22:52:45","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/nanima-by-alysha-mohamed\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T15:18:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T10:18:39","slug":"nanima-by-alysha-mohamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/nanima-by-alysha-mohamed\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Nanima&#8221; by Alysha Mohamed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nanima by Alysha Mohamed by Arc Poster\" width=\"580\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F865578106&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=870&#038;maxwidth=580\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nanima<br><\/strong><br>My inheritance from my grandmother:<br>broken Gujarati,<br>saffron flavoured phone calls,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tonguing foreign words<br>stuck to the roof of my mouth<br>instead of gliding off my lips<br>the way they are<br>supposed to \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wish my language wasn\u2019t buried<br>before I knew how to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fresh puris in the morning<br>her leather palms, still soft in mine<br>kneading yellow flour<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bapa always has seconds, even when he\u2019s not hungry<br>I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll ever feel full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She gave me other things too,<br>veins bursting with deep blue<br>stories of suffering<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of losing her father at eleven<br>watching her mother\u2019s<br>knees buckle, soul split<br>stripped of her childhood before<br>she learned to ride a bike<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I feel her bones under my fresh skin,<br>eyes a reflection of hers<br>before the light began to dim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have the same crack at the bottom<br>of our heels<br>my skin broken after running away<br>from every lover who tried to cage me<br>hers from running into the arms<br>of a man with a voice like her father\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes she is so full of love<br>the only thing she can do is sob<br>and run prayer beads through her fingers,<br>murmuring to a God that always whispers to her<br>but never speaks to me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most often, though, she cries because<br>there is a part of her so homesick<br>she will always feel lost;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have this in common<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alysha Mohamed<\/strong> is a poet, playwright, and journalist currently studying at Queen\u2019s University. Her work has been published in several magazines on campus, and her first play, \u201cMy Hands Were Made For This\u201d, placed third in Toronto Fringe\u2019s New Play Competition. She loves poems that burn, heal, and subvert all at once. This is her first official poetry publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NanimaMy inheritance from my grandmother:broken Gujarati,saffron flavoured phone calls, Tonguing foreign wordsstuck to the roof of my mouthinstead of gliding off my lipsthe way they aresupposed to \u2014 I wish my language wasn\u2019t buriedbefore I knew how to speak. Fresh puris in the morningher leather palms, still soft in minekneading yellow flour Bapa always has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10832,10713,10370,10548","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[74],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3148],"topic":[3178],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}