Cover image: Photo of Limantour beach taken by Tracy Allen, April 2025.
Sickness
In golden and silver coins,
A woman unfastens her girdle—
The pleading lover, blinded by direction,
Runs aimlessly.
Sickness! Sickness all around.
I am soaked in the harsh heat of time,
A familiar woman in a red Toyota Drives by,
her smile forced,
From alleyway to avenue.
Sickness! Within flowers. Within dreams!
In the blood cells, within the embryo.
On a gleaming, flawless cheek,
Suddenly erupts a pimple.
A bomb explodes in the elegant balcony-
New marks are etched on the map.
Will anything change? When? Who knows?
The socialist’s wealth swells in neat rows
In Swiss banks;
The people’s benefactor
Unexpectedly arrives at the Radisson
To play the game of “Love you, love you.”
As evening falls, the neighbor woman draws the curtain,
Says to the guest: “Do you know Picasso’s Mona Lisa?”
A local smuggler, a foreign cigarette
Burning between his fingers,
Scoffs: “All thieves! This country won’t last!”
Those who seek the road, not the destination,
The silent, the quiet ones-
They alone know
The cure, the resistance.
Stop me if you can
I will sin so much
That I’ll be crowned a saint.
While doing good deeds,
I’ll ascend as Emperor Lucifer.
Who are you? Stop me if you can.
Becoming naked over time,
At midnight in the Radisson,
I’m growing cultured.
As buildings collapse, an unfit engineer,
Killing and killing until I’m a famous surgeon.
Who has the courage?
Who’s out there? Stop me if you can.
Shedding skins over and over, an intellectual,
Looting and scheming, a shrewd bureaucrat,
Loving and loving until it’s hardcore porn.
If I wish,
I could massacre millions in a My Lai slaughter,
Or call for a ceasefire, pure as a white dove.
I have a hotline to God,
The key to Heaven is in my hands.
Take it from me, if you can.
Between black and white, high and low
Between black and white, high and low,
Domination, exploitation, East and West, center and edge-
An invisible division resides within relationships.
A sharper look reveals the truth:
From the gleaming brand-name drawing room,
To the spotless marble-smooth bathroom,
Is mixed in the dripping sweat,
Of a hungry, lonely, withered worker.
With a piercing gaze, it becomes clear:
Beneath the suit-and-tie corporate ‘!’
Lurks another self, drained of testosterone,
Consumed by libido,
Present beside the lover, yet absent.
The face enriched by facials,
Legs and thighs waxed smooth,
Once the web of artifice falls away,
A dark stain gathers at the navel-
In the final act of flirtation,
The fervent lover smolders on a dying ember
At the sudden stirring of wind,
The grand intellect collapses,
Like a cat out of the bag,
Shedding its sleek skin.
What emerges is the hidden language, labor,
body, and the politics of love,
Concealed within the seemingly flawless beauty.
Haroonuzzaman (b. 13 January 1951) is a translator, novelist, poet, researcher and essayist. He has had around 32 years of teaching experience at home and abroad. Besides teaching English in Libya and Qatar for about 12 years, he has had 20 years of teaching experience in English Language and Literature at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). In addition, he had been into print and broadcast journalism in Bangladesh and Qatar. Since 2005, he has to his credit several researches and a book on The Preservation of Endangered Languages of Bangladesh and a five-book Bangla Baul Series. These books have received rave reviews and wide acclaim.
