Fatima Malik
Fatima Malik is a poet with work published in diode poetry journal, The Georgia Review, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, and others. Through her poems, she continues to grapple with grief from her father’s sudden passing and stay in conversation with her heritage. She currently resides on unceded Munsee Lenape and Canarsie land.
IV
What was His
real response
to your Complaint?4
Poetry
The World After
came through in the squeeze
of your hand, warmth coursing
through to mine. I don’t see a river,
I can’t find a boat. I don’t even know
Poetry (translation)
The Vanishing Point of Your Love
The vanishing point of your love – that’s what I want
See how simple I am, and how simple my want
The beauty of a ghazal is its rhyme and its refrain. So I wanted to maintain that in my translation.
Poetry (translation)
کچھ دن کچھ ایسے شروع ہوتے ہیں
میں ٹھیک ہوں۔ یہ بھول جانے کا ڈر
میرے گلے میں اُس لفظ کی طرح اُبھرتا ہے
The original is beautifully economical, yet rampant with personification and metaphors woven tightly into what I can only describe as a very particular, very specific feeling.