poem

POETRY / Selected poems

The Little Boy.He sold magic .mostly for free, .wrapped in candy wrappers, .joy and spring-coloured rosettes, .and, at times, priced at .a few tufts of dandelion threads.

Photographing Muslim women: How Sufia Kamal broke the camera taboo

Sufia herself faced no trouble for having her photograph printed, but her poem did create difficulties.

POETRY / Ink and Tree

If every leaf that falls is a memory you’ve forgotten, then let my ink become rain— so you might remember how it felt to grow with me.

POETRY / Transmutation

The torn tune of a broken violin.Signifies the evanescence of joy..So many faded voices intermingle .This day and the night. .Moonlight has disappeared .In the sky overcast with commingled clouds. .The wind is sombre with the sadness .Of Bismillah’s ‘she

POETRY / Durga

In the hush—footsteps fill the laden streets, .grasshoppers teeth to return home. Veiled divine mother, .she blooms in shards—from under the rain.from beyond the sallow moon.in her lion’s gait… tidal sorrow pushing through .your swallowing metropolitan heap. .

POETRY / Your hands shook the whole time

Winters feel less like winters, the sun burns on my fragile skin. December. Tell me it’s

POETRY / The fire that has no shape

What do you carry in your heart’s bundle? A lineage?

POETRY / Three songs: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Ami chiratare dur-e chole jabo.(I will go far away forever).I’ll go far away forever—.yet I won’t let myself be obliviated..I’ll turn air to knot your hair.when the bun gets loose..Immersed in your tune.when the sky dozes, wind weeps,.with teary ey

POETRY / The whirring

“What will come out of all this?” The day starts with the devil flying overhead,

September 6, 2025
September 6, 2025

The fire that has no shape

What do you carry in your heart’s bundle? A lineage?

August 30, 2025
August 30, 2025

Three songs: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Ami chiratare dur-e chole jabo.(I will go far away forever).I’ll go far away forever—.yet I won’t let myself be obliviated..I’ll turn air to knot your hair.when the bun gets loose..Immersed in your tune.when the sky dozes, wind weeps,.with teary ey

August 23, 2025
August 23, 2025

The whirring

“What will come out of all this?” The day starts with the devil flying overhead,

July 22, 2025
July 22, 2025

Wings of ash

and for every grave / a firefly burns / and for every grave / Dhaka never learns

July 19, 2025
July 19, 2025

Scorching silence

Scorching in a way the April sun never was. / Scorching in a way a fever never feels. / It wasn't just grief

July 5, 2025
July 5, 2025

Even in hell, chanachur

And I realised: / even in the line to hell, / waiting for punishment, / we'd still reach for chanachur. / We'd still find comfort / in the crunch of survival

June 28, 2025
June 28, 2025

The poetry of rain

It would rain in the rains / And the rest of this poem would be written by someone else

June 26, 2025
June 26, 2025

Maybe a mirage

Something you may... You may never find again.

June 26, 2025
June 26, 2025

How to: live

My love always arrived wrapped in silence, wrapped in dust. But that was childhood.

June 26, 2025
June 26, 2025

Heart, cling to me

We will make meaning out of the holes in the sun