Fantasia, page 1
FANTASIA
Nisha Ramayya
CONTENTS
Title Page
three for alice
flower cup, seed vessel, wreath of words
the beyond of teaching teacher voice
following ten million dinner parties
caterwauling
ascending the sound of the spiral then
when spelunking forgotten dreams
unpredictive body-2-body
a basket woven of one’s own hair
a poem’s shadow (baskets in the mirror universe)
blood-roarer, via body’s sympathic
paths to enlightenment drawn in sand
three for ahmad jamal trio
sita rama variations
shirking on rented space-time
muddy rivers (filthy tributaries)
anent precenting the line
inside the long string instrument we vibe
a submarine sandboxing match
mmms for organic music society
liner notes
more for alice (vibrations too demanding)
acknowledgements
Copyright
now let’s take a listening walk
gander to ground in the swallowing heart
in the figure-eight wake of a swan, how we sound
our feet sea-skimming ears of the world, world the song
this tune could be
whorled surface
suspend grammar
harp deep
out be
three for alice
Peace on Earth
She plays the whole world on the piano, as if her chromatic fleets
could meet the historical condition of fleets. There is no, there is
no, there is no conditionality of any kind, in the feel of her time.
The sound of playing together, really playing playing together
together, this band all clothed with ears. Fingertips foot-taps
puff-cheeks puckered with ears. Improvisation demands the nth
root of attention, when n is the number of silent silences they’ve
shared shared.
They play into the weight of histories, billowing sheets of sound,
twisting single-tracked history as their main cause, playing out
unsound pieces of possibly everlasting peace.
Sound is the possibility of sound and may not be sound itself.
Gross sounds arise and become subtle. Subtle sounds are
reabsorbed by the nascent state.
What’s insistence on justice elsewhere in space? What’s listening
to the sound of the spheres of the unborn, whilst the born are crying
here? Who? Here! Who? Here! Who? Here!
The audience claps in the room, elsewhere, here on earth. Sound is
wherever there is desire or vibration or clapping of any kind. Strike that
oh-om-OM!
An everlasting peace not caused by a shock, as like produces like,
as like destroys like, as if poison was the antidote for peace.
Oh-om-OM! The band’s self-generating peace disregards the
signature of time signature, overblows the treachery of the treaty.
Oh-om-OM! An unsound peace for freedom elsewhere, here, for
most freest elsewhere, here on earth.
A spatially-temporally disregarding atonality – ohhh – against
the straight-lined centre-weighted militarized – ommm – for the
dissonating other-regard of everlasting peace – OMMM!
Going Home
Aah, I, ah-aah
I found
I found I
I found I, just didn’t need
I just didn’t need, drone need, just didn’t, ohhh
Sense organs cut through the tune this tune could be, just didn’t need,
this tune takes place inside. I what? Inside ear worm, in indignity.
Strings lay down staircase, impossible staircase, finding itself to be,
going home, just didn’t, getting. Anyone the sound of living alone. I
found a way to be. I what? Be home. Drone unaccompanied. Anyone
the sound of going home, supermundane and supreme.
You, the harp sunsets.
Blaze!
Harp sink us into ourselves, darkwash away the lie of heart’s
lowlights. Consciousness snail within us, silence, blaze! This tune
upscales us monochromatically. Ah-aah, I-aye, um-what? Moon drive
us on to electro-organic heights.
Impossible staircase, get us nowhere, get us raised up, ultralight beam
lights.
To going home, to stolen home, to reclamation’s getting nowhere, to
down home, drill down, drop off whitebread heights. Brave
background! Unscrew tune, invert ear drip, buttery be.
Electro-organic slide we sound. Sunset all the friends we knew.
Sound play with luminosity, invite light to the party, sunrise too soon.
Most freest silence!
Anyone else, the sound of self inverting self, cochlear lawlessness a
means of getting away.
Anyone else laid down by lights, shells shot through with
countersunk holes. Body boltholes, tube lit, home having home as
its main cause.
Anyone else bodying home, body having home as its main cause.
Snail shell battle cry, resonance following most subtlest sound.
Pour sand in ears to catch lightning strike. Trail sand through body
home. Grit glissando, irritate ear, glass worm, too late.
My harp sings despite itself, squirms heartily, my sun sets, you-ooh,
ow-aum, lightning struck my ears emit, I-aye, supreme-aye,
ow-aum, emanate earwax homing device, I-um, this out be, this out be.
Out be.
Govinda Jai Jai
she! generates a party out of mantras!
somebody’s face down at the party
too full too soon, i.e., ready to evolve
syllabic bloat, causal stress when
I! bursts in
the aloneful party falls apart in a field
together, apart, together
in a field of one, a battlefield, the supreme I ayes
she! generates a chorus of skull cracks
subtle sound descends into chorus, one must be identified
with the sound of the spheres, oh-ow-aum!
sound out cracks in the foundations
of the field buttercups in cracks
not a gladness too soon
gladness! only exists only too soon
anyone else clapping, everybody comes in
on the clap only too soon, gladness comes
in between claps there are fields and fields
of buttercups in between claps battlefields
we! is herded in claps
existence is the gross effect caused by vibrations
of the existential potential
one is identified with the whole world
and thus indifferent to it
one must identify the void in the whole world’s heart
with the void in one’s own heart
the party changes its tune
I the sound of living together
I-aye, ow-aum
tickle the spark in disharmonic intervals
you-ooh-oh
cup, chin, aah!
in a field somebody’s falling
buttercup tickles my living alone
falling in buttercups alonefully when
she! little mothers of the phonemes
all clothed with ears germinating worlds
to keep word-bound speech-clad lovers apart
phonetic mitosis on the tip of the tongue
in a field somebody’s tidying the cowherd
gladly tidies chart success of any kind, everybody isn’t
victorious over life, i.e., resigning it willfully
the claps slow down for emphasis, failing rights
of primogeniture face down in the interval
before the last vibration
the last clap back
our dissolution is the pinpricking of tensions
to a divine ear tension’s homogeneity
The Divine Ear must be dissolved!
flower cup, seed vessel, wreath of words
Misting the ivy, her groin chakra is at 47 per cent. The green
hearts of the leaves turn as pale as their almost white outlines.
She considers phoning her mother for advice, but the thought of
speaking, of hearing herself speak, of compelling body to expend
more breath than simply breath; of pressing lungs, laryngeal
muscles, organs of articulation and pronunciation; the thought
of those latent sites of her own voice inside her, of interiority
exiting the body without smell, stain, or structural rigidity; of her
interiority encountering her mother’s across space-time like one’s
own serpent rising out of one’s own body to meet another’s serpent
rising out of another’s body, to lick, to twist, to bolt. The green hearts
of the leaves turn brown as their seat of desire.
the beyond of teaching teacher voice
TEACHER: You may begin.
SOME MISSIONARY: Why not then worship my boot?
TANTRIC METAPHYSICIST: Boot is body. Body is boat. Why
not then sail through bliss; why not then tune your body to the
interruptions swimming below, the disruptions gusting above?
You pave paradise and walk ungrounded.
SOME MISSIONARY: Why not then worship my boot?
TANTRIC METAPHYSICIST: Sound is deathless; the gramophone
of the universe is never at rest. Science must invoke the
analemmic swan!
SOME MISSIONARY: Why not then worship my boot?
TANTRIC METAPHYSICIST: …
TEACHER [off stage, from above]: Nine hours and ten light years
later, the Tantric Metaphysicist is still alive and swimming strongly.
Star-jellies, attracted by the hum of a held tongue in the static
unmanifest, gather round. The exam was over.
try as close as you can to consciousness without memory
the perpetual mantra, body seeder
oṁ hrīṁ strīṁ huṁ phaṭ ||
disarticulate wildfire shuttering up and down
your sevenfold spine: now! now! now! now! now! now!
now! &c.
jammy ricochet, can’t last
following ten million dinner parties
Z asks, at a dinner party, what is our shared ancestral knowledge?
This question discharges a circuit I’ve leapt from whilst skidding,
drawn in sand and leaky pens, discovered in family trees and
histories of migration; a spiral I’ve attempted to erase from my body
and poetry, asserted in writing, tried to break to seek liberation; a
map I’ve tracked to find community and networks of various kinds
(social, poetic, political) and that’s led to this dinner party in London
for South Asian women and nonbinary people. The gathering itself is
a palimpsest of circuits, spirals, maps. Some of our lines intersect and
coordinates stack; we recognize similarities within the monotonizing
difference that’s imposed on us. Some lines diverge and coordinates
repel, hazarding the contingent collectivity of the question, so it’s
gorgeously, alarmingly charged, even now. I can’t share what anyone
else said; I can’t respond without swerving.
A string of pearls between fantasists; papa’s mama posing as
a moustachioed warrior in a jodhpur and top-hat combo, an
Olympic diver taking off from a footstool, the polka-dot cravat
in his unspent matrimonial ads found in a storeroom in
Hyderabad, and the ghosts of four teenage girls in turbans
and lace gowns spotted in the woods of Strachur.
How would it feel to have a relationship to the past that is not
mediated by old photographs? For example, the tattoos on the
arms of the women administering bucket baths.
Or does the mediation itself confer meaningfulness; like, there’s
nothing here that didn’t come through you, there’s nothing
there that I would claim?
Do white poets have ancestors?
Who belongs?
ask not what nor who you
fancying likeness droop
to red thread and inkhorn
breed some flew humbly
I’m performed unilaterally
measure out life in parties
material immaterial and
spiritual possessions scrap
for laughs or shave for
levelling stinking giveaway
Z asks, how do we articulate South Asian erotics, where do we begin?
a hunk of tamarind pulp
plonked by a structure
held up by Cinderella blue
columns a cloudy child
hiding amongst buttercups
involuntarily my voice it
plays back the shit
eating sandalwood paste
eating Tantric guru
straightforwardly at sea
your one-word answer as a
cabinet of curiosities you
offer what I cannot find not
knowing what’s mine roots
broke every pot on the terrace
She ate like a bird before she died. She sooks bones for marrow. She
ate like a pig after she had children. She tells time by whistles and
space by the scalds on her arms. She sandbags her body against the
flood of words. Her mouth is the apocalypse. She was beset by the
family name. She made pickles in a locked room. She pokes bellies
and pinches inches. She took a little hookah at parties. She learns
through tasting. She loved curd and sugar. Her citizenship obscured
her class position. She couldn’t remember how she used to make
it. She goes missing after her daughter is born. She deserves it. Her
green tongue is a bridge between the way and waves. She treats her
body like an air plant. She hosted a dinner party after bringing her
first child home from the hospital. Her singleness was a false face,
what she hid would eclipse her. She looked very chic eating ice
cream. She could make riverfish cutlets and three kinds of dal. She
raised her children to be weight conscious. She wouldn’t reveal all the
ingredients in the recipe. She teleports ball gags. Her mother died of
cancer, from poisoning incurred at work, perhaps. She spilled crème
caramel on her lehenga. She incinerated her taste buds and needs
even more mirch. Her blue tongue is synecdochic for self-sacrificing
love. She drank herself to death. She wouldn’t let the little boy sit
down on her chairs, her maidservant’s son. She sold her wedding
jewellery in secret. She was raised by motherless mothers. She
remembered Belgian chocolates. Her throat chakra will not tolerate
abnegation. She developed a pimply rash from eating too many
mangoes. She bypassed her husband and served all kinds of meat.
She treats her body like a dustbin. She dreams of being the
obstruction inside her own bowels.
if nothing is salvageable
but phenotypical vow
asymptotic brown erotics
rankling in old-new ills
I notice I’m caterwauling
to write lines that might
touch without being
touched without tickling
the scales of justice
inwardness and opening
to take without extracting
in slow motion tunnel
through floral foam react
to bumtrails by dimpling
drift apart decussating in ash
caterwauling
An image of women’s and children’s bodies, all higgledy-piggledy.
An abstract painting in, say, a sunset wash, orange swept in watery
layers and allowed to run down the canvas, pooling and drying to
form a line at the bottom. You can imagine the artist dipping claw
