Cover Photo: Tallulah Pomeroy
Tallulah Pomeroy

Looking Backward: How Urdu Poetry Makes Queerness Historical

For three centuries, the ghazal has been the most prestigious and popular genre of Urdu poetry.

“everytime the line
breaks I ache”
The Pink Trance Notebooks

pir,sama’.

firāq

My sorrows have become strange to me these days
It’s about the time of morning, the dew awakens
What’s judgment day but the beauty of both worlds
That bar, that wine, even that glass is the same,
That there is my beloved cupbearer, but the heart is emptied
It’s the same confusion, and yet it’s like a wave beneath the surface
My life is still the same, but Jigar, this is the state of things

lover

frangere

Kya faraq padta hai?Faraq,firāq,

Rajat Singh is a writer living in New York. He is working on a collection of essays on queer melancholy.