membery

The clever debut from Rajpal launches the reader into a spiritual journey through an ars poetica of social justice. The collection intertwines experimental forms with lyrical explorations of identity and history in the context of the partition of India and Pakistan, as well as the post-9/11 American Sikh experience. In “Aphasia,” reflection on a grandfather’s stroke is enriched by references to Punjabi scripts, “since the stroke filled his skull/ with the blood in midnight’s ink/ he writes back home from the half/ of himself charda where the sun rise/ to lehnda punjab where the sun leaves.” Language is versatile throughout, wielded as weapon, prayer, or family tree, and even transforming the act of slicing an orange into a metaphor for cultural cleaving: “to cut the flesh of my orange i|n|h|e|r|i|t|ance.” The poem “Patriot Act, Miscellaneous” imagines footnotes to the Patriot Act, a gesture on the verge of becoming clichéd in contemporary poetry, but the erasure technique adds an interesting layer here, emphasizing the question of origin and identity, “but where are you really from? he asked me, again on page 40./ no w(here)/ a place not bound in time.” This is a moving study of the role and limits of language in cultural displacement. (Nov.)