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Guest column: Yena Sharma Purmasir

Dirge

Across the world, people are dying.
Across the country, across the street.
Someone my age. Someone with
my mother’s name, my father’s face.
Everyday there are more people
asking what to do with the dead,
their bodies, yes, but also their things.
Where do we put their old clothes,
books, awful CD collections? Museums
don’t want that garbage. But we can’t
just throw it away. What about the hole
in the ozone layer? What about the fish
in the sea? Everything is wrong and there
are people you will never get to meet.
You could have loved them. You could
have borrowed all their favorite things.

Yena Sharma Purmasir

Yena Sharma Purmasir is a poet and essayist from New York City. She was the Queens Teen Poet Laureate from 2010-2011. In 2013, Purmasir won Where Are You Press’ first annual “Where Are You Poet” contest resulting in the publication of her chapbook, Until I Learned What It Meant. In 2016, she published her second volume of poetry, When I’m Not There. A Best of Net nominee, her work has appeared in Mask Magazine and the Rising Phoenix Review.

Purmasir recently graduated from Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on South Asian religious traditions. Her research endeavors were supported by fellowships from the Science, Religion, Culture Program and the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. She also holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College, where she majored in Psychology and double minored in English Literature and Religion. Currently, Purmasir is juggling freelance writing ventures while also working towards the completion of her third book. She resides in Somerville, Massachusetts.