SANAT RANADIVE

Platters

My ajoba has a story
from Texas in the 1980's
wherein he proves his worth
to the factory owners
by not taking a coffee break
like previous managers.

My parents have a story
wherein they're seated next to another
Desi couple, from Pakistan,
in a dim restaurant in Paris in 2015
who are both really beautiful
and really high and who tell them
about their life in Karachi
where the men and the women party
in separate rooms,
their nights of long dinners (whose
lush and honeyed dishes
I would not be able to name)
complete with alcohol, though drinking
is officially illegal there—
the parties crescendoing
with servants bringing in platters,
literal silver platters,
of cocaine.

It's such a horrible story,
my mother says, I don't want you
to write that down.

S-Bahn Sonnet

"Wenn ich untergehe- laßt meine Bilder nicht sterben." - Felix Nussbaum, 1941

The S in S-Bahn stands for nothing;
not Schnellstadt or Straßen or Soll ich

die Namen sagen? because nothing
will bring back the dead, whom we

feel so close to sometimes in warm
and quivering moments like that night

outside Tiergarten station in the snow
when I got lost inside an oil painting,

an en plein stolen from the deported
and missing and murdered in whose

apartments we now live, sometimes
laying flowers on brass, sometimes just

looking up at the sky, at those fluffy
clouds so free of history and hurt.

Advice Given at the Königliche Botanischer Garten

a found poem, from graffiti

Cock! Don't be a cunt.
Drop the masks
we're safe
System error—
it's okay to be sad
Dressing up for polaroids
and cigarettes
socialize romantisizing life
Love: Aykal + Seda
18.08.2015
trage skinny jeans baggy
kiss me hard
te amo
Skip class / smoke grass / eat ass
ACAB
Straßen aus zucker
Wir sind die geilsten
Aber nicht geiler als WIR
KILL CAPITALISM
für mehr flauschigkeit
Schoko Zitrone
22.09.2022,
Lotte + Emilie
NO BORDER NO NATION
STOP DEPORTATION
wer hat?
wer will?
GEGEN RASSISMUS
& GEGEN HUSTLE CULTURE.
WÄHLT DIE URBANE!

(It's hard to be human again)

Ode to the Porn Star's Tight Asshole

whose name might never
             have been mentioned, come

to think of it, in the title
             or description of that video,

both of which I've forgotten,
             like I've forgotten the faces

of that man & the woman
             w/ him, though I remember

the beige walls, gray sheets,
             whispering in some Slavic language,

maybe just occupational words–
             Lean back, Moan softer– though

maybe it was something sweet,
             him, golden haired & golden

skin penetrating her
             before being penetrated,

something which requires
             the utmost amount of need

& risk intertwined which is why
             when he spread his legs

to fuck her doggy-style
             w/ his back to the camera

that tight black spiral
             of his anus seemed so open,

so asking.

Orpheus

His songs are still sad: more Frank Ocean
than Vampire Weekend, but no one can say
he's not postmodern, inauthentic, not seeing
us for who are. Yes, he's lost, like most of us
are & have been, but his voice spans vibrato
& smooth tenor, his lyrics are clean
as a bone, like Baldwin says, bleached w/ time
on the beach, salt & breath intermingling.
I can only hear him when I think about you
while wandering the city in this heat, sun
pooling onto leaves & graffiti, the whole world
a sauna, sweating out false words & stupid
longings with its burning tongue— & then from
a radio or passing car I hear his voice clear as ice

Sanat Ranadive is a high-school student living in Berlin. You can find him on Leibnizstraße eating an anpan and thinking about how many streets are named after dead writers. Or on Instagram @sanat.ranadive.