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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
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      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
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    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
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      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
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  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
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      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
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    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
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    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025

Jaswinder Bolina

In My Bright Autocracy

 Hallo, Dave! David, hallo!
I’m having so good a day, I don’t need you

and don’t need the hulk of you sulking into
my dance hall with mud on your boots.

I skid up the courthouse steps
vindicated and free,

lift up my robes and issue exquisite decrees,

so no, I don’t need you, your grassroots and counsel.

When I pour water into a wine glass,
it’s one kind of miracle,

and it’s too good a day, Dave, and I don’t need you
or dour Faisal or any of the grim Ethels,

your protests and woe!

The soldiers stomp onward,
and they stomp onward with glee,

so no, they don’t need you, Bertha,
your washcloths, your pathos and honey.

I indulge extravagantly in legumes and peaches.

I ask my spleen for nothing,
but on it goes with its spleening,

so no, I don’t need you, Chester, I don’t need
you, Marie, your picketing and screeds.

The wan girl standing on the corner with a clipboard
and a bandage on her back

covering a new tattoo is another I don’t need.
I don’t need to know her name

or in which tearoom she partakes of oolong,
making delicate gestures.

Darfur is far away, and Pyongyang is far away,
and the gum-rot, rusted armpit of the city

is a glinting mosaic of broken bottles of Yoo-hoo!
and Pabst and is fed and is sated and free,

so she doesn’t matter as you don’t matter.

Aw, Dave, I’m having too good a day,
and I don’t need you and don’t need you,

and if you should come this way
by buggy, hybrid and electric,

or by a wide, purposeful stride,

you’ll find my face is
the face on the coinage,

my voice is commanding as the ping
of a fork striking a crystal decanter,

and I’m presiding under the meniscus of night sky,
luminous and solitary as a firefly

beneath a field of stars, unconstellated.
​

All My Darlings


I’d only just been thinking of you very deeply.

I’d seen a Corvair rusting on a Tuesday
and recalled that summer we spent driving.

I noticed a drawbridge drawn tall and, naturally,
remembered you drinking a Pete’s Wicked,
arguing the relative merits of the founding fathers.

How you lauded Alexander Hamilton.
How your eyes accounted.

Even now the drunk seeming sway
of birches evokes you

collecting leaves to press between pages of a dictionary,
a you, so vaguely you
in a top hat and the sleek sheen of vinyl boots.

That funny little cross atop every steeple in town

makes me think of you
thinking of the birds as crossing through crosshairs.

You were a woman of so elegant a candor.
You were a man of such good measure.

Blue was the light of your hi-fi display.
Green, the distortion of your tv screen.

Soft, the dilly-dally of your hairdo.

I contain you now the way the ringing ear retains thunder.

Do you still eat three cuts of meat on marble rye?
Do you still get rowdy on Arbor Day
and tear down the corridor scattering
your dossier all over
so no-one can know you or tell you apart?

No-one can know you or tell you apart.

Even now, all the ratty hipsters become you,
and all the blonde diplomats become you,
a you with domestic accoutrements,

a you with parcels on the Elevated gliding
through a vapid fog.
 
You who merengue without me,

who see me when I don’t see you

among the dithering crowd on the parade ground i
n your new pair of shoes.




​
--
Jaswinder Bolina is the author of Carrier Wave, winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Poems from his new manuscript will appear in upcoming issues of Columbia Poetry Review, Third Coast, and in The Best American Poetry 2011. He teaches at Columbia College Chicago where he is the 2010–11 Liberal Arts & Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025