‘Dear Adam, this night is for us’: Five poems from Pallavi Padma-Uday’s new book of poetry

Refugee

It’s not berries, but the colour of blood clotting
on my tongue, so pungent I must be dead
to lick the wound but I do. Like a carnivore.
It’s the fear of walking into the light that bares
my tummy tucks. I always buy black dresses.
It’s sweat-soaked wipes buried under the bathroom
bin. It’s many colours against white, yet no one wants it.
The garden soil smells like cow dung, like the dorm bed
children wet in sleep. There is always a pillow for weeping.

Dear Adam, this night is for us

alone in a Snapchat room where distance between us dissolves
and we see each other in psychedelic filters. In this alternate
universe where love is free from lockdowns, we can be lovers and
friends, suitors and flirts, listeners and therapists within seconds
of a screen scroll. Here, we don’t see our tired muscles or the
over-flexed weights you championed once because none of us is
here for winning. In your three decades, your heart has sought
acceptance for the body scarred with rejections, but we know we
cannot take snubs as last words on the promise life can be. Your
laughter rings like gurgling fountains and the world fades like days
in autumn. In your eyes, your dreams have condensed into longing
transfixed into mine. Your parents lived through big Troubles, you
are so ready for someone like me – brown and battered, star from
firmaments where shooting is forever. You and I are escaping. Let
us dream again. What do we fancy but not the same things! You
wear toys to titillate, I give warm virtual hugs. You gravitate from
happy mornings to devastating blur of evenings and I turn dark,
turn bright, like a million light bulbs experiencing power cuts in a
day. You, the lad from Ballymena; I, the immigrant in Belfast. We
are waiting to merge like coconut milk and sambhar in a bowl.
Imagination is the refuge of those who come from nothing. I
imagine you in my room, looking exactly as you would like me to
see you. The fabled Horse. Virile Adam in the Garden of Eden. Useful
and Happy. You imagine me through the calendar that marks your
furlough. Will there be enough money to spend on bus rides to
see strangers? You keep asking what will I offer when you come? I
say – everything we have imagined. Snow in my window, scorching
summer in my bed, and you rising in its areola looking like Spring. The
giant you can be, the forest fires we can be. What do you imagine this
will be like, I ask? You being You – young and restless, brave and
listless – send snaps, filling up our dreadful isolation. Red t-shirt
on the bed. Green dumbbells. Yellow shorts. The colourful pills from
the doctor last week. Your rosy flesh and blue veins. A selfie. Your face
radiates desire but your beloved pizzle of a pride keeps sleeping.

For those who never cry

I wish you cubes of ice,
a handkerchief to wrap
a perceptive eye,
a heart that sees
bones and flesh,
rivers in chambers
of slowly passing lungs.
I wish for hands that heal
red bulbs against brown,
semi-circles of misery –
warm but ready
for cold-storage relief.

In the Queen’s Garden

In the Queen’s Garden at Hillsborough,
fallen petals from the rose plants
smiled at me, smelling of nothing
but looking pretty. I stole a few,
if stealing from nature could ever be
called so, saved them in my coat pocket,
like imagined kisses from unrequited loves.
Here, golden gates have turned into
open arms of mothers, allowing for
warm embraces. We are fee-paying visitors
in a nod to progress, but shall I ever
live in a castle with pillars like gold and
diamond buttons in suite-like tearooms?
There are no private lakes for my summer
swims, nor forests and bird trails waiting
just for me. I don’t refuse to see all the beauty
but the Queen’s Castle doesn’t dazzle me.
I do not blink when the roses turn black,
dark as memory that does not forget
what history remembers.

Sea beast

Every nightmare was a dream,
every ghost once a human.
What do we call the Manx Sea,
a moving stew of simmering deaths,
a twister of turf wars so blinding
it doesn’t matter where it starts.
Sublime Anglesey sleeps awake,
clouds of winter fog do break
on the Isle of Man, one thinks,
boatmen are coming home.

The stench of misery sails south
like dead fish in balls of fire
from the Atlantic North.
So long, history, we want to say,
let us never meet again.

The marauding vessels, the fault lines,
the industrial waste, abundant greed,
emissions, the emissaries of cancer,
becquerels, tonnes mere numbers
in world-changing voyages.

The water renews in rains,
the past lingers.
Swim in its past.

Do not plumb the depths,
keep floating,
conjure dreams.

Emerald green on sea-green,
waves surf against the hills.
Here, find eternal graveyards,
white as sugar, cold as snow,
bury distress, buy few boats,
resurrect from slate-grey storms
the apparitions of tomorrow.
Befriend men and children
on the beach, go sailing,
come back dead from joy.

Be the rock, get conquered by snails,
change colours, mingle with seagulls,
let lichen eat you up and turn you
into kale, get drunk up like smoothie,
be the freak, sail against fear,
be the sea freezer, wrapped in surf.
Become Ophelia, let sailors come,
swallow them up, the orange ships,
Tamar lifeboats, the rescue crews
taking chances, off bay of Kilmore,

become a ghost
eat them all.

Pallavi Padma-Uday is the author of two collections of poetry, and a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre. She has been shortlisted for Arts Council Ireland’s Literature Bursary 2024. She is currently finalising the draft of her third poetry collection and working on a nonfiction book while writing a thesis in economic history.

Excerpted with permission from Lola in Belfast, Pallavi Padma-Uday, Writers Workshop.