Bloody doesn’t capture their blood. Bloody,here, was an end, though their blood hasn’t stoppedbleeding despite they are bloody. It’s maybebleedy, then. Or blooding. Or bolding. Nothingstops their valves from carrying on bleedinguntil they drain, or are drained by force, beforebeing drained anyway. So tonight, I was thereto bond—not close, not almost—with themin flesh to see living proof of the policeputting our tax money to best use: to reassurethe government of the country’s essential medicinefor protesting. High-pressure water cannonscouldn’t move them. Someone jokedthe President could deploy water cannons to solvethe droughts in Rajarata. They cackled in waitto be teargassed as the veterans of suffering, barelytwo decades into life, our boys and our girls. Ourclergy, too. I laughed at their jokes and watchedour bleeding flow: Out. Out. Hot. Hot again
Anticipation of the Inevitable
at the IUSF Protest, 20th May 2022, Colombo
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“Anticipation of the Inevitable ” from becoming sam by Samodh Porawagamage.
Published by Burnside Review Press on June 11, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Samodh Porawagamage.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
samodH Porawagamage writes about the Sri Lankan Civil War, poverty & underdevelopment, colonial & imperial atrocities, and disproportionate impacts of climate change on rural & marginalized communities. He is the author of becoming sam (Burnside Review Press) and All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths (forthcoming from Airlie Press).
Samodh Porawagamage’s first book, becoming sam, was selected by Jaswinder Bolina as the winner of the 2022 Burnside Review Press Book Award. He writes about the 2004 tsunami, Sri Lankan Civil War, poverty and underdevelopment, and colonial and imperial atrocities. His poems have appeared in the anthology Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala & English Poetry from Sri Lanka & Its Diasporas (Bloodaxe Books) and a number of journals.
“A vivid, gutting, and memorable collection, becoming sam moves from poem to poem like a deftly crafted memoir in verse. It recounts, both, the quotidian dramas and violent terrors of a childhood lived through the Sri Lankan civil war alongside the quieter violences committed against an immigrant acclimating to life in the U.S. The subtle shocks and startling turns in Samodh Porawagamage's poems bring me sometimes to wonder, sometimes to tears, and always to gratitude for their brilliance.”
—Jaswinder Bolina
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