People’s Republic of Disjointed Narratives

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3:38 AM- the mosque at Mohammedpur is closed.

The steps are open, but we are not to wear our shoes.
We are all men, or are said to be men.
The security guard in cammo blows the security guard in navy,
Rahad notices this and immediately throws up laughter. We acquiesce and look. The guards, and they are not men, intentionally so, are seen retreating from their positions.

Generic Bangla cinema hall music plays, preferably about want.

4:07 AM

It is my fourth mountain dew.
The intersection of the four roads are a convex of parked buses, which are usurious in the daytime. The conductors are missing.
Topu complains about the crisscrossing cement mixers, driven like ambulances,
A billboard losing its gum arabic for the fresh new thing,
Overpasses becoming gardens.
It is the serenade of development.

–

9:46 PM on the day that hardly exists

We have finished our banquet at Chankarpool.
The bill was split. I paid both halves.
The other wanted to write patronizing prose on men with rolling pins stretching dough.
But am advised against it.
I am sensuous.
I have been reading phenomenology.

–

4:52 PM- it is pay day at Chandpur tea estate, Chunarughat, Habiganj

The Cashier shuffles change as the tea workers’ fingers hang from window rails,
A raise has been in effect for 3 weeks,
85tk a week.
From.
69tk a week.
Maybe the plantations owners are kind.

–

7:17 PM

Tomorrow I will see a broken-winged canary playing duet with mother,

A monkey with a noose on,

And twenty-three tea-gardens rallying for their land, and against the special economic zone proposed on the people’s land

For now. It is

An ink well of around me.

“Talaash-e-Gumshuda I” by Sufyan Baig. C type print on archival paper. 19.5×23 inches.