My People’s Voices
My people’s voices are dying
killing their memories
severing connections
to their homes
lost lands meant
to be forgotten.
Byproducts of history, national stories
woven by official histories officials,
storytellers plunge between
elation & despair.
My people hid themselves,
merged their voices
old words into new country’s new accents,
fled over new borders
they lived, I listened
My people, I captured
their voices revealed
their hidden wounds seeping
permanent markings on paper–
made by fresh cuts, lines
trickling where they once bled.
Dhooleka Sarhadi Raj (she/her) is a poet anthropologist (PhD, Cambridge) who has called both SE Asia and the Middle East home since leaving New York (where she still lives via poetry zooms). Author of Where are you From? Middle Class Migrants in the Modern World (University of California Press, 2000), ‘The Journey of a Bitter Gourd’ in Foodprints, A Collective Food Memoir (2020) her poetry has been published in anthologies and zines. A recovering academic, she is actively working on her book group addiction. She loves to interrupt her walks by taking photographs, cook in exchange for meaningful conversation, and enjoys experiments with genre and form.
The Marbled Sigh 