august, nineteen-forty-seven
Ria Raj
your mother tells you to drench yourself in every piece of clothing you own and you do not want
to be a jungli so you wrap your torso in kurtas and salwar kameezes and layer your long legs in
tight churidars and you want to bring your ghagras but they are too heavy to run in so you leave
them behind and as you tie each dupatta you own around your waist, you can’t help but wonder
if any of this will keep them from clawing at your brown limbs, from flushing your brown
intestines of chawal daal, from peeling your brown arteries apart, if any of this will keep the pale-
faced colonizers from dismembering your brown body.
Note: Jungli is Hindi for mischievous/rule-breaker/crazy. Chawal daal is Hindi for rice and lentil soup. The other italicized words are Hindi words for different types of clothing.
Ria Raj is a queer, South-Asian-American writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. Raj is deeply interested in the intersectional constructions of brownness, queerness, and womanhood in the literary archive, and how their work might fit into this constellation. Their creative work and literary research has earned the UC San Diego South Asian Studies Undergraduate Paper Prize, the UC San Diego Making of the Modern World Showcase Award, multiple spots in the UC San Diego Dean’s Office Undergraduate Art Exhibition, and a finalist position for the Sherley Williams Memorial Prize in Literary Arts. Raj has upcoming poetry publications in Eunoia Review and Zhagaram Literary Magazine, and an an upcoming prose publication in Fleeting Daze Magazine.
