Taslima Nasrin Poems

Women spend the afternoon squatting on the porch,
picking lice from each other's hair.
They spend the evening feeding the little ones,
lulling them to sleep in the glow of the bottle lamp.
...

My life, like a sandbar,
has been taken over by a monster of a man
who wants my body under his control
so that, if he wishes,
...

The fellow who sits in the air-conditioned office
is the one who in his youth raped
a dozen or so young girls,
and, at cocktail parties, is secretly stricken with lust,
...

Let all of you together find a fault with me,
at least a fault you all jointly work out,
or else, a harm shall befall you.
...

I'm going to move ahead.
Behind me my whole family is calling,
My child is pulling my sari-end,
My husband stands blocking the door,
...

When I die, leave my corpse there.
There where they vivisect dead bodies,
In the mortuary of the Medical College.
...

Am I so dangerous a criminal, so vicious an enemy of humanity,
Such a traitor to my country that I can't have a homeland to call my own?
So that my land will snatch away from the rest of my life my homeland?
Blindly from the northern to the southern hemisphere,
...

Why wouldn't Eve have eaten of the fruit?
Didn't she have a hand to reach out with,
Fingers with which to make a fist?
...

How are you
Many days, many thousand of days I don't see you ma,
Many thousand of days I don't hear your voice,
Many thousand of days I don't feel your touch.
...

The garment girls, walking together,
look like hundreds of birds flying in Bangladesh's sky.

Garments girls, returning to their slums at midnight,
are met by street-vagabonds who grab a few takas from the girls,
...