Shafinur Shafin, BANGLADESH

MY MOTHER

My mother was my first grave
Sheltered me in her warm womb

My mother was my first mistake
Welcomed me to a world
against everyone's choice for a boy

My mother was my first adversity
Shackled me in a society
Where eyes make me uncomfortable, filthy   

My mother was my first darkness
That Let me to kill my will,
To Envelope all the secrets in the heart
Where windows are shut to let
the light to come in
To deceive myself always 

But me looking at her
Can't say anything
She is my only hopelessness
From my birth
I can see me in her
Bound to a life
With an unending fear
For my unborn daughter


REACTIONS

I'm not a good Poet
I do not know
HOW to write poems
You Men like my poems
just because
I am beautiful
Just because
I have an appealing voice
and
I can talk in an impressive way
You men appreciate my poems
just because
I'm still young
just because
I'm a female
This is the way
How you react to
the beauty of my poems
Thank you although,
At least
you have one eye
to see
one side of the truth!


I WANT TO WRITE MY FEAR

I want to write my fear tonight
I'll not talk about
my fear of the thunderbolt
when it sparkles
and draws uncanny
violet lines on
the blackish sky

I'll not talk of
the loud noise
that makes me shrink
to myself

I will not depict my fear
of getting frozen
sensing no love
between our sweat

I won't talk of the fear
of your return,
you who I once named
'spider'

I won't even talk of
the worst of my fears
of being raped
in a world
where women are rated
by their age,
religion, caste

and people
make fun of
those things freely -

"so, you are Muslim,
I have every right
to rape you,
even if I were to drag you
out of the grave."

Or,
if I happen to be
a Hindu girl,
my mom will ask
the rapist to go slow,
and one by one
so I at least
do not succumb!

I'll not talk about my fear
to live
to leave
I will not.
Trust me.

Tonight
I'll talk about
the overhung
spider web
in my wash room
how I feel so annoyed
of having a shower
before its eight eyes
wide open.

(Published earlier in Period Magazine)



Shafinur Shafin is a Bangladeshi poet. She has published her debut book “Nisangam” which is a collection of Bangla poems in 2016. She is also the poetry-editor in an e-zine named Prachya Review. As she cannot paint, so she wants to create image with the power of words. She writes in both Bangla and English languages. Her Bangla poems have been translated into seven different languages including Nepalese, Hindi, French, Spanish, German and Italian language. Her English poems have been included in two anthologies published from New York and Philippine, and also her poems appeared in several international magazines.

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