NVN Thursday: MAMDANI

by Indran Amirthanayagam

For a short highlight of Mamdani’s speech, go to https://youtube.com/shorts/XbYx5KAJkB8?si=dx4BAB-kT4pIkAdO

*

Boffed, bumped, beaten, 
bled and bleeding I have 
lurched everywhere 

seeking to straighten up, 
to get on with the business 
of making and conserving 

while seeing fellow 
migrants rounded up, 
shackled, jailed, flown 

to foreign jails, 
to foreign countries, 
on this once blue 

and green earth. But 
was it always greener? 
Surely princes 

of darkness weaved 
their scythes through 
the pitch-black flesh 

of history to be 
countered then 
by a bearded man

who threw 
moneylenders
out of 

his father’s temple
manifest now 
in a young 

mayoral candidate 
of hope from 
the city of NewYork.

*

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published his translation of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books, 2025). Other recent publications include Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.