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Assemblage

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Assemblage into motherhood…Spilling into questions of beauty…Deliverance…To Push Through…Traces of Self…birth a new narrative… There must have been a dozen words, lines, inspirations from Mia Malhotra’s pieces here that had me swooning over the potential column theme. These striking pieces feel like an open conversation on stepping into (or wanting to step into) parenthood that I have longed to continue with Mia and her poetry. We are honored and excited to feature her again on the Nikkei Uncovered poetry column and at our virtual reading tonight (Aug 22, 2024). Enjoy!

— traci kato-kiriyama

* * * * *

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Mothersalt (forthcoming 2025) and Isako Isako, California Book Award finalist and winner of the Nautilus Gold Award, Alice James Award, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. Her chapbook Notes from the Birth Year won the Bateau Press BOOM Contest, and her work has been recognized internationally with the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry and the Singapore Poetry Prize. She is a Kundiman Fellow and founding member of The Ruby SF, a gathering space for women and nonbinary artists. 

 

On Form

            with lines from Sei Shōnagon 


I became a mother and I began to write like a Japanese woman.

Which is to say: I began to write like myself—from the imaginary whence my mother’s mother and her mother before her came.

Things That Are Distant Though Near: Festivals celebrated near the Palace. The zigzag path leading up to the temple of Kurama.

When I became a mother, my lines began to grow less regular, less sculpted—and this itinerant prose did not adhere to shapeliness.

Instead it spilled from birth into death and questions of beauty, arranging itself as it wished.

An artful, yet imperfect text.

And so I began to build strange, unkempt houses for my words to live in. Interior spaces without doors, only half-imagined windows, which opened to rooms where a person could wander, lost, for days.

It’s no surprise this didn’t happen earlier—in school, for instance, when a professor handed me a book of haiku.

Deeply Irritating Things: A man who discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.

Tell me about the form mothering takes on the page. Why it accumulates so—fragments, notes. A slow, painstaking assemblage.

And I found myself heavy with the days.

And my belly bulged with them.

And the days accreted like lines.

Things That Give a Clean Feeling: An earthen cup. A new metal bowl. The play of the light on water as one pours it into a vessel.

 

Deliver


de·​liv·​er | \ di-ˈli-vər, dē- \ (transitive verb) 1 : to set free : At first I paced up and down in a gown that did not close at the back, trying but failing to Progress Labor. 2a : to take and hand over to or leave for another : CONVEY : When they induced me it was with jagged, spiky contractions. The fear, an eerie bottle-necked sensation. Bent into a C-shape, I shivered from the epidural’s sudden chill. b : HAND OVER, SURRENDER : Handled in this way, birth became managed, procedural. c : to send, provide, or make accessible to someone electronically : Years later, I requested my medical records but reading them found no trace of my self. 3a (1) : to assist (a pregnant female) in giving birth : The second time, I arrived at the hospital in active labor, breathing hard and zeroed by contractions. The midwife knelt on the floor beside me, hands firm and steady on my back. (2) : to aid in the birth of : Take it low, the doula said, she’s coming. b : to give birth to : When I close my eyes, I see my vulva stretched and swollen, its purplish red—and in the center, the dark of a head. 4 : SPEAK, SING, UTTER : My body, fighting to deliver despite itself. That band of scar tissue, the doula said. If only we’d known. Dear Body— I want to say. Tell me your story. 5 : to send (something aimed or guided) to an intended target or destination : They say most mothers want a natural birth but fail because of inadequate labor support. A third of all births end in C-section because of Failure to Progress. 6a : to bring (something, such as votes) to the support of a candidate or cause : Our vision is that every pregnant person should have an empowering birthing experience. We seek to empower birthing people to claim agency over their bodies. b : to come through with : PRODUCE : Bring it low, the doula said, and PUSH. (intransitive verb) : to produce the promised, desired, or expected results : Time to birth a new narrative. To put our bodies back in the story, and the story back into our lives.

Note: “Deliver” takes its form and definitions from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It also includes language from the mission statements of the organizations Black Women Birthing Justice and the Roots of Labor Birth Collective, which can be found on their respective websites.

*“On Form” was originally published in Literary Mama (2021). “Deliver” was originally published in Prairie Schooner (2023). Both poems are copyrighted by Mia Ayumi Malhotra.

 

© 2024 Mia Ayumi Malhotra

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About this series

Nikkei Uncovered: a poetry column is a space for the Nikkei community to share stories through diverse writings on culture, history, and personal experience. The column will feature a wide variety of poetic form and subject matter with themes that include history, roots, identity; history—past into the present; food as ritual, celebration, and legacy; ritual and assumptions of tradition; place, location, and community; and love.

We’ve invited author, performer, and poet traci kato-kiriyama to curate this monthly poetry column, where we will publish one to two poets on the third Thursday of each month—from senior or young writers new to poetry, to published authors from around the country. We hope to uncover a web of voices linked through myriad differences and connected experience.

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About the Author

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Mothersalt (forthcoming 2025) and Isako Isako, California Book Award finalist and winner of the Nautilus Gold Award, Alice James Award, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. Her chapbook Notes from the Birth Year won the Bateau Press BOOM Contest, and her work has been recognized internationally with the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry and the Singapore Poetry Prize. She is a Kundiman Fellow and founding member of The Ruby SF, a gathering space for women and nonbinary artists. 

Updated June 2023

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