winds hold dessicated promises unkept at dusk of your precipices chandeliers fall asleep stirred by dimness caressing wire sculptures coursing through veins

And so little by little They all fall through

Empty sockets of haunted Ghosts and imaginary lines

Outstretched hands reaching out For miracles and blood

All the wishes forgotten

Those promises and veins never came true.

NEW DELHI (AP) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Monday announced rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law that excludes Muslims, weeks before the Hindu nationalist leader seeks a third term in office.

The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to naturalization for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec. 31, 2014. The law excludes Muslims, who are a majority in all three nations.

The law was approved by Indian Parliament in 2019, but Modi’s government had held off with its implementation after deadly protests broke out in capital New Delhi and elsewhere. Scores were killed during days of clashes.

The nationwide protests in 2019 drew people of all faiths who said the law undermines India’s foundation as a secular nation. Muslims were particularly worried that the government could use the law, combined with a proposed national register of citizens, to marginalize them.

The National Register of Citizens is part of Modi government’s effort to identify and weed out people it claims came to India illegally. The register has only been implemented in the northeastern state of Assam, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has promised to roll out a similar citizenship verification program nationwide.

Modi’s government has defended the 2019 citizenship law as a humanitarian gesture. It argues that the law is meant only to extend citizenship to religious minorities fleeing persecution and would not be used against Indian citizens.

“These rules will now enable minorities persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in our nation,” Home Minister Amit Shah wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

India’s main opposition Congress party questioned the announcement, saying “the timing right before the elections is evidently designed to polarise the elections.”

Human rights watchdog Amnesty India in a statement called the law “discriminatory” and said it “goes against the constitutional values of equality and international human rights law.” It said the law “legitimises discrimination based on religion” and is “exclusionary in its structure and intent.”

India is home to 200 million Muslims who make up a large minority group in the country of more than 1.4 billion people. They are scattered across almost every part of India and have been targeted in a series of attacks that have taken place Modi first assumed power in 2014.

Critics say Modi’s conspicuous silence over anti-Muslim violence has emboldened some of his most extreme supporters and enabled more hate speech against Muslims.

Modi has increasingly mixed religion with politics in a formula that has resonated deeply with India’s majority Hindu population. In January, he opened a Hindu temple at the site of a demolished mosque in northern Ayodhya city, fulfilling his party’s long-held Hindu nationalist pledge.

Most poll surveys suggest Modi will win a majority in a general election that is scheduled to be held by May.

poem no. 6—from unpublished rejected chapbook: forms—written during pandemic

sangam palm boulevard backwaters your narrow trail dip fingernails bindi and you say next year knowledge of bodies through window end on just it sounds absurd but id like to hold your mornings when you cannot hold yourself today your body is so delicate it apalls me driving back through rain graspable in low-light mirror appreciate error the space between separateness

yes and that straggly word out into its dioptre alphabets

into a replica airplane upon jaggery frosted lips: leave before light finds you

in mistrusting darkness uneven in violence of time 

i said something i had said before

that's all there is to life: 

saying something you said before you said only this amaranth moment

animal in verbs

situational with evening beneath your sudden fingernails

what are orangutan friends doing with you swaddled in cashmere

in beholden blankets more smog

if you say nothing you say each particular past participle of nothing: we are

an imp instant

we are what we were before: someone's tragedy

in bulrushes in guileless pines

what of the world in waiting you ask maddened mind

im of incense smoke hair: the murmur of continents between us

thump your sound shifts space you're not there in waves discussing atmospheric perspective averted gaze is naturalised cover of daydream deep eyes as alluring as distant skies i forsake omniscience the dangers of expectation and habit to ideas to the process of creation you have nothing to do with me nape as apple tree allow yourself no feeling

boston praying catholic jellyfish comeback. you end on a question. no e-mails just phosphorus giveaways. i read somewhere something sometime some poems on refrigerator doors, vaccum cleaning. they stick "strawberry semen" inside my neurons, axons, dendrites. my synaptic transmission is retarded. flickering flame in your pining, cracking westerlies. i tell you i can take you apart cell by lowly cell with edges of my jaded canines. im doggish. hound-like. a beast sniffing where i shouldn't. lissome sighing dreams of dirt. you're underwater wrapped in cathedral imagery and sins original. the "please" exhortation is murakami-ish. you say, you're already scattered. i comply. do i? it's also february regret, in swollen tongue pronunciation, yellow irises. you spit a thread towards arthropoda arms. too "jointy" for anything. too funerary. i speak to this poet i.e. i memorize her dissertation to steal her thoughts. she comes back with a knife for me to stab her in the heart. she says, do it in one go. i cut diagonal. she hangs up her lips on breaking twigs. i stitch mine. we leap into our rabbit hole galore. the jellyfish worships one god. at a time. there are myriads then, just one at a time. you genuflect. i am two am. i am two fifteen am. i am three am when machines are dismantled by your mirror that reflects you as something gloriously vain. the room shines like calvary. first cut mandala denouement. sixth poem junkyard but you desire iron. irony. you're on your knees grimy to dictate how it's to be done. how it's to be burnt. slow pace backstroke grace of peripatetic desert hermitage neon curves. keep me warm in between them. boston harbour obsession dazzles your sunglass eyes parry ardour long call. i buy sunflowers for myself. for me for you.