The Better Monsters - Puneet Dutt (Mansfield Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Better Monsters.  Puneet Dutt.  Mansfield Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2017.

The poems in the first part of Puneet Dutt's bracing and honest The Better Monsters come from the voice of an outsider.  Dutt's voice has been in camps, heard gunfire at night.  But by the time we are finished Dutt is insider enough that she knows exactly how to reach us.

Whether in Jalalabad or Kabul Dutt's world-weary voice always remembers that:

                                     

                                                "to see fighters

                                  from another country with guns

                                  in my local market everyday

                                  not knowing what they were doing

                                  I would hate them"

                                                       

                                                             VIII

                                                              Over Cider And Whiskey In Hotel Rooms

Dutt's voice is also inhabited by those same fighters, lost in a world foreign enough to them to allow any extravagance or insanity.

Alien Alien

"he pays cash, that's why he's called Mister."

            - Oswald Joseph Mtshali

never had an education

took a talvar to school

and fled the country

records of Saturday Night Fevers

bell bottom stone-washed jeans

played his youth

eyes closed

he reached Queens

doors closed to his

dark room body

doors always closed

no matter the knock

we were toes and whispers

children of his parent's eyes

he left his records behind

walled open to VHS's

CDs

Deep Purple Aerosmith Bon Jovi

another hit

long drives

alone in a white U-Haul

and all the trucks he ever haggled for

that broke down from so many miles

Hey God, I'm just a little man got a wife and family

he knew the songs

the CK jeans

Yankee's cap

they sold him

her and him

two suitcases each

so fast they left us

to get there

Memphis to New Orleans

i asked him

her 

what did you see

criss-crossed veins

America

alligators and beads

the giant peach

what did you see

dekhna kyah tah

what was there

we'd long for postcards

textbooks

Mount Rushmore Gettysburg America

highways

highways

5 a.m. and stand

fleamarkets sun under tarp

until now they can't stand anymore

i find them again

on the same street

weary of motels and rest stops

bruised soap souvenirs

of what they've been

back to where they started

97 to 95

from Georgia and back

all along the coast

boxes we'd help make

thought it was a game

hide and seek

perfumes scrunchies barrettes

whatever they could buy

whatever they could sell

always afraid of who was at the door

she kept chipped bottles

Testers without caps

fingered blue RI, America

gifted us Caution: Flammable

and sprayed

stars and stripes

we got through school this way

not being stinky Pakis

go home

we bought

like good greencards

when they asked

we bought

swore allegiance

to clothes and movies

credit card after credit card

found a way to stay

that English

fly tape ensnares flies with appealing colors

Made in USA

so much about

explorers

Manifest Destiny

Christopher Columbus

that America

and when they try to make the rent

next month  we have it next month

we scattered

kids and weddings

north and south

they still ask us where

we're really from

implies place

when i slip a hundred in her purse

even when i dye my hair blonde

my tongue lashed by ESL

i can only interpret

a weekend

so many of us

learned

the odds are bet against us

              we alien alien

...

Time and distance take new shape when you are on the other side of the world from where you started, the earth your toes remember both too far away to touch and too long ago for warmth.

Punnet Dutt's tender and tragic poems seat the reader in the empty space endured by those who are forced to leave their own terra firma, their own culture, their own countries.  Dutt makes it real on the page.

Today's book of poetry thinks that Puneet Dutt talks from both sides of the invisible fence that impedes all our human travails and this encompassing vision serves her well.  As harrowing as some of the moments these poems endure, Dutt's voice ultimately never gives up hope and that's the magic.

Coordinates

it's 4 a.m. and clear

             13 degrees centigrade

             in Jalalabad

             Google can't calculate the drive   the

walk    or how long it will take by TTC

             only shows the expanse of impossible

blue

             the mouth of the South Pacific

             the fingernail of Chile

             and Hawaii         the crumbs

             i type:

"calculate distance between two coordinates"

and receive

the haversine formula

to calculate distance between two points--that is

the shortest distance over the earth's surface

and the bearing between two latitudes

purplemath.com promises

the distance formula   its origin   its use

the length of hypotenuse   is the distance between two

points

               another

says to just type your equations and let the calculator do

the rest!

to find the distance between two points

(X1,Y1) and (X2,Y2)

all that you need to do is use the--

                but all i want to know is

how far

from daughter

from mother

from herself she will be

                from me

when she returns

...

Our morning read was a little more low key than usual.  Apparently our entire staff, moi included, decided that we could drink all the red wine we could find in the bar.  Amateurs that we are we left three bottles standing at the end of the night but we'd admirably polished off several of their friends. The morning read was subdued intensity tempered by aspirin.  But Dutt's voice was clear, despite our fumbling efforts, these poems worked.  They have been tempered over hotter flame then any of us will endure.

Reasons To Throw Stones

America begins

this way

48 Trenton St.

where i slowly ask

what i'd thought of for a year--

why did you leave me behind?

she sniffs and

immediately pulls me toward a bath alarmed

by the size of my long loose undergarments

stitched in India elastic frills and ribbons at

each end you can't wear those!

i'll have to take you

shopping!

sluicing me over the head with measuring

cups of soap

immediately America begins with a vigorous

scrubbing immediately i change and please so

immediately i know America is not for big

open questions my mother brandishes card

after card slashing through lines builds my

closed of each auditions next day don't give

them reasons to throw stones this she gives me

now i arrive in Canada i don't know what to

do immediately when i arrive to Canada what

to do immediately?

...

Today's book of poetry thought Puneet Dutt's poems were human in a way that allowed all readers to get to the center of them.  But once there Dutt isn't reluctant to insist you see the battles and the battle scars from a new position.  Dutt aims for The Better Monsters amongst us human beings and emerges at the end of her harrowing journey still embracing hope.

That's courage.

Punnet Dutt

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Puneet Dutt received her MA in English from Ryerson University. She is the author of the chapbook PTSD south beach (Grey Borders Books), which was a Finalist for the 2016 Breitling Chapbook Prize (Phantom Books). Her work has been published in a number of journals and in Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She was born in India and raised in New Jersey. She now resides in Toronto with her husband, where she is an editorial board member at Canthius and a creative writing workshop facilitator with the Toronto Writers Collective. She can be found online at puneetdutt.com.

BLURBS

“Fierce and finely crafted, The Better Monsters distils life’s strangeness in poems that bridge the gap between warning and augury. A tour-de-force from one of Canada’s most promising writers.”
     —Jim Johnstone, author of The Chemical Life

“In this gripping first collection, Dutt evokes innocence within and despite the cruel enigma of inevitable arrival. She masterfully connotes this ironic centre—the empty solace of truth telling: ‘so fast they left us/to get there.’”
     —Hal Niedzviecki, Broken Pencil Magazine

“The poems in The Better Monsters teach us how humanity is its own greatest threat but also its greatest salvation. Dutt’s world is one of greater and lesser evils, where the only virtue is the beauty that her language provides. Yes, perhaps her poetry is our best chance to escape our everyday monsters, our monsters within.”                                                                                                                     —Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Pushcart Prize nominated poet, New York University, United Nations                                                     consultant

mansfieldpress.net

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