Taneum Bambrick
We are in the moment before we decide,
for the first time, to have sex.

We fill our mouths with salami and wine.
I am careful, peeling wax paper off glazed sponge cake

baked by nuns who live down the street.
One nun, this morning, took my hand in hers

while she told me that the most important ingredient
is the silence of prayer.

I cannot tell you this, but I held onto her
while she walked me through a village

made of thick paper. A train with a real light
and human figurines hot-glued to look

like they were heading somewhere.
I was terrified. I didn't touch a man for seven years.

Asleep. Your eyelashes open against my chest.
You are the first person to not know this.
from the journal THE NATION
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I wrote this poem while I was living in Spain for a year, studying Spanish and teaching at a rural secondary school. I spent my twenties explaining to people that I could not experience sex normally because I survived sexual assault. In a new relationship, looking up the correct words in Spanish triggered me, so I stopped trying to warn him. I reimagined my relationship to intimacy, to myself.

Taneum Bambrick on "Saying I Am a Survivor in Another Language"
Still color image from entrepreneur Karthikeyan Mani's film, Puram
2000-Year-Old Tamil Poem Revisioned as Film

Indian entrepreneur Karthikeyan Mani wants to bring more ancient poetry to modern audiences. "Most think that only two epics exist — Ramayana and Mahabharata. But we do have texts that go probably older than those epics. That thought motivated me to explore ancient Tamil poems."

via DTNEXT
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