Karan Kapoor

November 1, 2023

“Portrait of the Father as an Alcoholic” by Karan KapoorPosted by

Karan Kapoor

PORTRAIT OF THE FATHER AS AN ALCOHOLIC

The first thing I notice about him
is the expression on his face baring
his sobriety is a bubble one can pop
with a blow. He is a unicorn—a horse
of addiction with a horn of dedication
to quit. The days he chooses not to drink
flake off his shoulders like cracked paint.
By the time he was my age, he’d burned
alcohol into his skin. He’s not guilty
of all he’s accused, but still guilty
of so much else. Why should I draw
his portrait in third-person when I
can in second- which is to say why
should I paint you in blue when I can
in sky? For decades, you have smelled
like areca nut and slaked lime.
We have amassed wrinkles begging
you give up. Ma doubts you
will die a delighted man. As do I.
As do you. Diamond wounds
diamond, you say. Why does water
not wash away water? Poison remedies
poison, why does wind not blow away
wind? The despair of not raising a glass
to despair is an essential precondition
of despair which echoes higher
than cheer that comes by confessing
cheers. Long after you, we will boast
bruises on our chest to show you
were here. Now we bathe
stone in milk, bury a sitar
in a tree for the wind to strum,
praying the music will urge you
to seek help. You’re God,
you sing.
 

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023

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Karan Kapoor: “This poem is the faux title-poem of the collection I’ve been working on for three years: Portrait of an Alcoholic as a Father. Writing about a troubled external subject is as much an excavation of their deepest flaws as it is a revelation of the writer’s biases. Leonard Cohen, at whose altar I worship, says ‘poetry is merely the evidence of life.’ I think this means that not only is a poem rooted in real life, but that much of real life is understood through a poem.” (web)

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November 14, 2022

“Ghazal for Dida” by Karan KapoorPosted by

Karan Kapoor

GHAZAL FOR DIDA

There is no harm, in times of darkness, to use god.
Light, love, is seized time and again, else we lose god.
 
The devil measured every pain he could draw from our bodies;
straightened his back, and asked: Now, who’s god?
 
He stood at your door—you averted your eyes.
O dying mother, with whom did you confuse god?
 
On certain nights she screams curses at Krishna.
There are times, O despair, when we cannot choose god.
 
You blew on the first morsel, then offered each idol. Now 
your unfaithful tongue burns each time you abuse god.
 
Best to let the past remain in the past—she
weighs the beads of her rosary to seduce god.
 
Take me into your arms, O omniscient one! 
With endless prayers all night, unafraid she cues god.
 
The world is full of binaries. God is singular. 
Who divides better than morning news? God.
 
On each of our arms, the black moment we are born,
the words suffering, sorrow, and death tattoos god.
 
As a child I was told there’s one answer to all:
chaos, caste, guilt, grief, grace, a bruise—god.
 
At the end, we forget more than we remember.
It counts we are blessed—who cares by whose god?
 
My mother sits by the moon, sister a candle—
I know I am not alone who interviews god.
 
His crimes forgiven for centuries, enough now!
We’ll execute—fetch the hangman, bring a noose—god.
 
Your name is her offering, Karan. The day she dies
you will lose your name, and you will lose god.
 

—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022

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Karan Kapoor: “Dida (my paternal grandmother) was sick for six months before she died, three years ago. In that time, I moved between weeping, massaging her feet, and writing. That death inspires poetry is not new. Whether as journalistic expression, ritual purgation, or literary experience. When I began working on my collection of poems for Dida, I found myself shifting through these three states. I wrote to survive her death. The strict form of the ghazal allowed me to channel (and give structure to) the chaos that severe inexplicable illnesses bring to a house. I started with 21 couplets and brought them down to 14. While traditionally a song of longing and love, and at times political advocacy—the ghazal—mastered by Agha Shahid Ali in English—is a form that defies what we think is possible in poetry today. At once dramatic, self-aware, subtle, musical, excessively emotional, and then quietly metaphysical—it is emblematic of poetic community. Death, too, does not happen alone. Especially in India—it brings together families, beliefs, doubts. Nor is writing truly a solitary act. All poems remain unfinished if unread.” (web)

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August 14, 2022

“Salman, Bombay” by Karan KapoorPosted by

Karan Kapoor

SALMAN, BOMBAY

I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it’s the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.
—Salman Rushdie

I have spent almost a month in Bombay with
Midnight’s Children on my bookstack, taunting
me. Each time I think let me open the first page,
I remember another place I have to be. You called
it your love letter to India. Being from Delhi, I don’t
understand why anyone would write a love letter
to India. Sky, a tarpit of cancer. Yamuna, more
akin to a block of frozen sewage than waving black
water. Each small street bloated with buildings
and people like a starving child’s belly
sick with kwashiorkor. Bombay is more
polluted than Delhi but it boasts an ocean.
Is Bombay rain different from Delhi rain?
It is a question of lily or acid. The sun appears
here like answered prayers—unpredictable,
infrequent, and always more beautiful falling
on your face through a veil than stitched into skin.
Outside my window, above your book, the clouds are
compliant, smoothening through the grayblue sky
like children off to school. Wind bulldozes through
a banyan’s dreadlocks. Isn’t it funny how telling
the truth often feels the most like lying, like doing
something wrong? Here, it is midnight and I am
awake because in New York you have been stabbed
they-aren’t-sure-how-many times. I glance again
outside the window and think of water think
of thirst think of opening my mouth think
of moths think how could anything
as birdlight as music make one a criminal.
A child, blue beneath half-aglow streetlight
is trying to stretch a blanket over his body
in the hopes that it might become fire, engulf
his cold. His father snores nearby. No mother
in sight. I refresh my screen. Ghost a hand
into the sticky air, feel pinpricks of light salt rain.
Wonder, are you allowed back in India?
Please, come back with your eyes open.
 

—from Poets Respond
August 14, 2022

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Karan Kapoor: “As of now, 2:31 a.m. in Bombay and 5:01 p.m. in New York, Salman Rushdie’s condition is unclear. Last month, I brought his book with me to a Bombay visit, thinking his hometown would be an excellent place to enter into his most prized fictional world. While here, I have amassed even more of his books. My partner and I recently studied his Masterclass, eagerly discussing his wisdom and wit. The many articles and statements coming out at present about this deplorable attack speak volumes. I am sitting here and have only my sadness and this poem to offer. Without Salman Rushdie, the literary canon would have been a monochromatic field of bright stars. His works, and the works they inspired, and the diverse works that he endorsed, have shone the sun on the South Asian literary world. We cannot lose him.” (web)

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January 19, 2022

“Circles” by Karan KapoorPosted by

Karan Kapoor

CIRCLES

after Bob Hicok

I do not want my mother to die. My mother does not want her mother to die. Her mother does not want her husband to die. Her husband does not want his son to die. His son does not want his daughter to die. His daughter is too young to pronounce death, let alone decipher it. Three days later, when her grandfather will die, she’ll be braiding her doll’s hair. Thirty-six years later, when her father will die, she’ll be looking, with ocean eyes, at her six-year-old daughter braiding the hair of her doll. Three days later, tired of the doll, her daughter will ask her the question she did not ask her mother: where do they go? She won’t know what words to put in her mouth, so she’ll leave her mouth open. She’ll chew on it all night. Nobody wants to go somewhere they can’t return from, do they? But then, who wants to go so far only to return? My father cuts the strings of kites when they’re way up in the sky. The world is full of kites like these.

—from Poets Respond
January 19, 2022

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Karan Kapoor: “Bob Hicok’s birthday is today. I write poems because I want to make someone feel the same way Bob’s poems make me feel—full of wonder, beauty, joy and innocence. Each of his poems take me to a place beyond suffering. I imagine it’d be easier for Sisyphus to roll his boulder up and down the hill if there was Tchaikovsky in the background, or I was reading him Bob’s poems. I do not like that we write tribute poems to poets only once they’re dead. Bob Hicok is alive and writing the most surprising poems and deserves to be celebrated every day, but especially today. I’m so glad that he was born. His poems make me want to be a better person.” (web)

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June 29, 2021

“What It Is Is What It Is Not and What It Is Not Is What It Is” by Karan KapoorPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2021: Editor’s Choice

 

Contradictions of Being by Neena Sethia, image of a head, a leaf, and other shapes on a blue background

Image: “Contradictions of Being” by Neena Sethia. “What It Is Is What It Is Not and What It Is Not Is What It Is” was written by Karan Kapoor for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Karan Kapoor

WHAT IT IS IS WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS NOT IS WHAT IT IS

A picture of God is not God
the way a painting of water is not wet.
An image of the sun is not hot

and all those poems about poems
are just something else. Leaves, alive
or autumnal, time alone dictates.

Disembodied lips of a corpse
cast a shadow of a blackbird
with an impressive bill—

boldly, the shadow sings of its flaw
of colorlessness. Remember, your flaws
are yours, you are not your flaws.

A face behind a face makes the one
in front a mask. Affected love is not love.
Affected harshness is still harsh.

A woman with waves for hair
does not necessarily carry
an ocean inside her

head. Notice she begins
only as a bubble
of thought. Everything blue

was once green. A star is not a star
but its memory, its history. Looking back
isn’t wanting. Memory of love is not

love. Desire to help isn’t helping.
The winged-man also falls. The horse
in my head is not the horse

in your head. A dancing man
isn’t evidence for music. The eye you look
into is always looking right back.

A flying white bird is not always a sign
of freedom. Your face and flesh
is not your self. All that is lost

is somewhere found.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2021, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the Editor, Timothy Green: “In his note that came with the entry, Karan described this poem as ‘a string of aphorisms, though born from the same impulse as a poem. And in my head, all these aphorisms are waving a flag that is Neena’s painting.’ I can’t put it any better than that. The poem explores the central theme of the painting, but verbally, creating a deep dialogue between the two forms of art. Each line is memorable and surprising, and their accumulating mystery invites multiple readings—and further explorations of the painting.”

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