National Poetry Month Spotlight: Laila Malik

We’re back with the second feature in our National Poetry Month Poet Spotlight series. Next up is Laila Malik!

Laila is a singular and thoughtful voice in the poetry scene! We are honoured to have published her debut collection, archipelago, in 2023.

Today, we’re sharing Laila’s poem “all your grandmothers have stopped cooking” from her acclaimed collection!

PS) Remember to follow along all month for more #NPM spotlights!

all your grandmothers have stopped cooking

this is how we know the world is ending.

the grandmothers have set down
their dois and there is no succession plan.
the grandmothers are stubborn
in their armchair naps, dogged in their deafness.
committed to crosswords and ipads, days punctuated
by scheduled medications and short-lived, rheumy rages
about rain and satellite dish reception.

you will ask me for the family shalgham recipe.
i will nod as though i have waited all my life for this, and
i will launch whatsapp inquiries and google investigations
seeking a legend to the map of your veins.
i will ask whosoever still breathes and cares, whosoever
holds fragments unbloodied with grudge.
i will stitch the patchwork and call it our flesh.

we will not use mustard oil because it is banned
in this country as well as unneighbourly. also because
erucic acid will kill you. we will buy garam masala
from the desi store, some sweaty stranger’s measure of
spices grown, ground and packaged in an undisclosed
facility marginally closer to your so-called point of origin,
misting carbon across oceans to get to you. i will crosscheck
whether a shalgham is a standard turnip or some
other hyperlocal brassica, and fret over the algebra of red
meat. beef is too tough, lamb too distracting, goat is rangy
and what in god’s name is mutton.

behind this, planet whispers
sit like lead on the guilt gullet.

i will utter silent prayers over heat that spreads a circle
across the glass-top stove and into the steel pot, feeblebottomed
but stout with on-my-honour promise to protect,
no old-world cancer castaways on my watch.

and bhun. bhun like a grandmother, like your life depends
on it.

if a shalgham is not bhuned
and no grandmother is there
to seize the doi from your
hand, is it

still a shalgham?

we will sombrely proclaim this the alchemy of our
dna. we will perfect the dish, imagining
the grandmothers into a kodachrome era with brighter
flavours, better fashion, more precise truths. tongues
warmwagging, dois aloft.

we will set it on a bed
of basmati, ignoring inner voices that ask which grains
were collected and deposited en route. we will use forks
because we have forgotten how to use fingers, and also
because germs. we will imagine the future secure.

we will chew thoughtfully. we will summon every ounce
of effort to enjoy this resurrection of memory, forgetting
until a grandmother cackles, “gonglu!” between
mouthfuls that they had a whole other word for it,

that there never was
a recipe.