KELLY KAUR IS GOING PLACES WITH HER CANADIAN MIGRANTS STORIES.

KELLY KAUR

Originally from Singapore, Kelly Kaur is an internationally published writer now residing in Canada. Kelly's novel, Letters to Singapore, published by Stonehouse Publishing, May 2022, was launched in Canada and Ubud, Bali. Her works have been published internationally. Here are some of them: Understorey Magazine, Blindman Session Beer Cans, Best Asian Stories 2020, Let In the Light, Asia Anthology, Best Asian Poetry 2021-2022, International Human Rights Arts Festival, New York (2021and 22022), The North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival Travelling Exhibition, Growing Up Indian (Singapore Anthology 2022), and Landed: Transformative Stories of Canadian Immigrant Women ( September 2022). Kelly’s poem, “The Justice of Death,” was awarded Honorable Mention in the Creators of Justice Literary Awards, International Human Rights Art Festival, New York. She was selected for The Only Question Project, Mannheim-Calgary. Ulyanovsk UNESCO City of Literature: Authors in Conversations, Her story, “The Kitchen is Her Home,” published in Fragmented Voice, Heart/h, Home Anthology, United Kingdom, October 2021, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022. Her works are on the Lunar Codex project: her poem, “A Singaporean’s Love Affair” is going to the moon on the NOVA Mission on the NOVA time capsule in 2022. Letters to Singapore will also be going to the moon on the Griffin Mission on the Polaris time capsule in 2023/2024.

SHORT STORY AND POEM BY KELLY KAUR

MY OWN SKIN

The five-year-old unravels at home, sobbing from the incongruous assault at his pre-school. His holy hair desecrated, the proud mark of his heritage. A pair of scissors in little, lethal, young bully hands. targeted. terrorized. terrified.

The teenager tastes the gritty sand on the hostile ground of small-town Alberta. Assorted angry fists mercilessly pummel his head, face, neck, torso, groin, hips, knees, shins, ankles. Ferocious feet kick in the nooks and crannies of his twisted trunk. Petrified. He wears his palms like an inept shield. Barely sufficient for twelve hands and feet that furiously flail his trampled soul. Mocking monkey sounds infiltrate the cool April air. No promised refugee sanctuary. Bruised and battered, the young man stays barricaded in the impenetrable prison of his fear. they made me afraid to wear my own skin.

The poised and polished Asian lawyer sits in the comfort of his car at the corner of a busy boulevard in Vancouver. He rolls his window down to distinguish the yelps of the men in the car next to his. Their vicious words wallop his peaceful existence. Slurs suspend like muck in mid-air. His window repels the tossed bag of trash. shame, sorrow, vulnerability.

Two young women in hijabs attacked at a park a young Black man assaulted at the bus stop a Vietnamese woman slashed with a knife at the mall a synagogue desecrated a Sikh man shot on his driveway while washing his car go back to where you came from bullets ricochet through mosques, temples, synagogues, churches heads bowed in ardent prayers fervently seeking peace & love a family of five Pakistanis viciously mowed down at the traffic lights on a serene Sunday evening by a man in his eerie shadowy truck one lone child survived forever orphaned by hate

Still
Still
Still in the silence
We dream of roving ancestors
travelling descendants’ dreams accumulated from all bends of the universe
Of the endless race for unanimity
Of tender words to dress profound wounds
Of the magnificence of diverse shades and vivid tongues
Of colorful hearts that love indiscriminately
Of discordant minds that connect peaceably
Of anthems of courage and love
Of accents that chant a chorus of harmony

I am honoured to wear my own skin
I am gratified to wear my own skin
I am proud to wear my own skin, eh

Published in IHRAF Publishes on January 23, 2022, International Human Rights Arts Festival (IHRAF), New York