Artist: Shantanu Mitra - RædLeafPoetry

Transcription

Artist: Shantanu Mitra
DISCLAIMER
All opinions expressed by the authors in their work published in this issue of The
Brown Boat are their own. The magazine and its publisher do not accept any
responsibility for those at any time. Copyright for their respective works rests entirely
with the authors. The collective rights for this issue of the magazine rest with the
executive editorial team of the magazine.
WEBSITE
rlpotrey.org
[email protected]
ART WORK
Cover Art & Watermark
Copyright: Shantanu Mitra , 2014
Portrait of Tristan Tzara
Copyright: Ramasastry V S
The Brown Boat | rlpoetry.org
2
Ajaya Mahala
Andy Powell
Anindita Deo
Ankita Anand
Baumier Matthieu
Bill Yarrow
Dwarakanathan Ravi
E J Koh
Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla
Geethanjali Rajan
Hema Ravi
Jack Galmitz
Janaki Nagaraj
Janak Sapkota
Jyothsna Phanija
Kinga Fabó
Michelle D'costa
Neelima Vinod
Peter Cowlam
Priya Anand
Sarita Jenamani
Saima Afreen
Sharmada Shastry
Shloka Shankar
Shobhana Kumar
Souradeep Roy
Somendra Singh Kharola
Subhadip Maitra
Sudha K F
Trishna Mohanty
Uma Gowrishankar
Vinita Agrawal
Zahira Rahman
3
Editorial
“APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land…”
Rædleafpoetry India has been publishing lilacs since 2012 under the Parnassus and Carnival
section of the Poetry Lounge category. But somehow, over a period of time, a magazine
appeared much more presentable than drop-down menus. Hence, The Brown Boat. As the
name suggests is a mere vehicle to help poetry exchange homes across frontiers.
At The Brown Boat, every poem received through the Submittable was carefully attended
and offered utmost hospitality. The rhyme and the meter, the juxtapositions of found and
lost poetry, the experimental and the wanted poetry, the nuanced, the niche, the extremist
avante-garde, the silence of haiku- the brevity of one fat letter or the boldness of a
punctuation or deliberate ideas of denying grammar were all scrutinized measure by
measure. I walked through the branches of each sentence like an inchworm, tasted each bud
of syllables, each leaf of word, each blossom of imagery, the river within the branches and
their absolute familiar unfamiliarity. And it was worth all my time.
Our Call for Submissions was also very clear. We were specific of what we were looking for“If you count your hours in lunatic thirteens, then you are the one for us.
If your work howls like Ginsberg’s, then you are the one for us.
If your vowels are illuminated in hell like Rimbaud, then you are the one for us.
If your words plop like Basho’s frog, then you are the one for us.
If you have carved your verse on Sanchez’s tongue, then you are the one for us.
4
Just like John Baldessari, we don’t believe in making boring art. So send us your neurosis!
Don't send us the ordinary. Send us the aberration!
When Jennifer Robertson and I were discussing the Brown Boat at Jaipur Literary Festival
2014, I was sure that such a wonderfully illustrated Call for Submissions will attract nothing
less but good.
Contrary to Elliot’s statement quoted in the beginning, this April has been kind enough to us
by awarding Vijay Seshadri, The Pulitzer in Poetry for his ‘3 Sections’ besides introducing us
to the genius of late Tristan Tzara.
I recede here congratulating Vijay for emboldening the spirit of poetry. Leaving you to
Tzara’s words to start a meal of 50 pages with:
“There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators,
issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge
of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by
profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing
joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a
tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men.
Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a
mania for improvement.”
Happy Reading!
Linda Ashok
Editor
Portrait: Ramasastry V. S. | Tristan Tzara
5
Ajaya Mahala
repetititititititititition….
strangulated between
NOT LOVING
&
NOT BEING LOVED
6
Andy Powell
Overtime
hun?. . .
how's it at home?. . .
of course I know, it's just, I don't know. . .
i'd never jack off at the office!. . .
but now that you. . .
still there? hun?. . .
i lean back in my seat and face the glittering city through the window then turn back
and hunch like a red-eyed truck driver over his wheel
i'm plotting for the bulbs to be sent tonight
thousands to pasadena, barstow and santa fe
strings of gold fizz
streaming along the freeways
a humungous extension cord
to keep the glass droplets pumping
light through the trailer's transparent walls
the whole drive long
two hearty beams
to lead the charge
walloping the lizards and the wolves awake
the desert lit
a brighter yellow
than usual
7
Andy Powell
sixteen floors up
i stop spinning in my seat
i plug my bottle of Delirium Tremens
its last bubbling gush
powering through my intestinal tracts
a sickness swelling
i wasn't afraid of heights
before
8
Anindita Deo
Finished Room
In yellowing pages
standing stark,
almost carved
on a paper
that bleeds,
in stylistic font
a lone sentence.
"I could not simplify myself"
Above it
towering
capitalized
in slightly bigger font
"Suicide Note“
That hint of
borrowed bareness
how could it be yours?
a memory
you've adopted?
a pose
you've assumed?
words
you've paid the price for?
Why can't
it then
Be?
Mine.
9
Ankita Anand
The Strange Familiar
A jar of sugar, the cinnamon sticks you always eyed, which were neither all sweet nor
all sharp and refreshed your mouth if you had tasted anything too sweet or too bitter.
How does a plastic toothbrush stand survive forever, remain unchanged for all these
years when everything around it had changed so irrevocably?
All the places I had dreamed at, the mirrors I had stared into, the damned spot on the
white marble which refused to be out – they’re all there, at home even when I am not.
The visitor who arrived in the veranda in the evening and whom you greeted in the
same fashion all through the years still marks his attendance on desultory evenings,
inviting a shout out from the veranda to the kitchen for a sweetmeat which the
children appropriated that morning. The small figurines struggle to hold their own in
the big showcases, which were built with so much ambition but could only house
random birthday gifts like ‘You’re my friend’ photo frames and a brass plaque, a painful
reminder of older days which weren’t even luxurious. But the brass plates were
retained because those days still held the hope of better days. Now they’re all lined up
and clinging to their dignity with all they have. Pelmets without curtains, chairs
without cushions: everywhere the promise, not at one place the fulfillment.
My adeptness too is still there, when it comes to slipping into my old place in the
house: crawling back in the fetus of my dreams to escape the unpalatable reality.
Can romance and repulsion coexist? Or is it possible to meet the desperate need for a
safe house - one pure and unchanging and which purges everything you keep there, all
your thoughts and dreams and hopes, and does not change?
10
Baumier Matthieu
Poems from Mystes
I
Je suis né
dans un pays de neiges
et de cendres
Pays où l’on n’arrive
Jamais.
Et que jamais,
on ne quitte ni ne connaît
Pays d’où personne ne vient,
où
le soleil croît
en larmes de cendres,
débris de neiges noircies
et d’âmes englouties
dans l’étincelle
des silences enfuis
Je suis né – ici,
ainsi que naît la peur.
I was born
in a country of snow
and ashes
A country where one
never arrives.
And one
never leaves, never knows,
A country where no one comes,
where
the sun distills
tears of ash
the debris of blackened snow
and souls swallowed up
in the sparks
of retreating silences
I was born---here,
just as fear is born.
11
II
À la limite extrême
des mondes abandonnés
se produit le son
d’étoiles amères
égarées sous la voûte
de nos corps enfermés
Alors
la lune s’enroule
aux lisières tranchées
de veines de granit
Baumier Matthieu
At the extreme limit
of abandoned worlds
the sound of bitter stars
is heard
wandering beneath the vault
of our cloistered bodies
Then
the moon enfolds
the borders carved
from veins of granite
où luit la parole
des épaves glaciaires
échouées sur la grève
de nos vies
where the word shines out
from glacial rubble
abandoned on the strand
of our lives
III
Silencieux
un morceau d’étoile
In silence
the fragment of a star
me regarde
à travers les cailloux
de pluie
eyes me
through the pebbles
of rain
l’heure approche
de lui tendre la main
the hour is coming
to hold out my hand to him
12
Bill Yarrow
THE MIRROR TIRES OF LOOKING AT ITSELF
“No man forgets his original trade: the rights of
nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar, if
grammarians discuss them.”
—Samuel Johnson
We are all essays, some poorly written,
some sparkling prose. The best of us
have a thesis, a goal which organizes
our lives. We prove ourselves, our claims,
as we go. Transitions are our friends.
We move toward conclusion, but others
will have the final word. In heaven, we get
edited. We are read by those we leave behind.
Sure, to a teacher, life is a paper.
But what would life be to a druggist?
Surely, surely, he’d have other ideas.
What about a dry cleaner? A barista?
The safety inspector? The auto mechanic?
The hedge fund manager? The golf pro?
Have you asked the butcher’s daughter?
Have you approached the neighborhood fellatrice?
13
14
Dwarakanathan Ravi
autumn wind...
serene flute notes
fill the air
highway traffic
a bicycle weaves
through the maze
wind chimes -listening to Mozart
on the porch
thoughts of you...
buried beneath the blanket
I search for warmth
15
EJ Koh
Showtime
Something I say beforehand:
Jal butak hapnida.
This translates into, “Please be kind to me.”
But it suggests:
Even if I shame myself,
please be kind to me.
In the mirror, it means:
even inside my greatcoat
of conscience, drunk and white,
please be kind to me.
Leaning on Heaven
I was twenty-four, I was stunning
and still alive watching the attendants
shut the compartments above, harder as they neared
then disappeared. No one was ever safe.
“Going home?” asked a woman
as old as the heavy blue velvet over the seats.
The city crept away past the windows.
Lying against the headrest, I opened my hands,
“Home is for people who are ready to die.”
A minute after, the woman is asleep
with closed fists. Soon she is gone like the rest
in the cabin without the deepest sound
of the engine. I am weak
from missing what I know is gone.
16
EJ Koh
Today Never Happened
I’m getting my imagination’s tubes tied in Cancun.
I have wanted to since 2008. No more sentences like:
A school of stingrays dry out on the line,
or washed shoes grieve in the sink, or my ovaries
are meteorites turning, eventually they do explode.
Or girls talk in Technicolor at a circus in Jeju.
Or they say, We’re not people, we’re sheeple.
Before I marry the whale-like quiet and pave over
all obligation. Before I avoid murderous self
murder, I leave you brown baby daschunds
and a fact: if you’re near a crematorium and smell
fresh-baked cake, it’s not cake.
17
Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla
The Absent Lady
At half past five
I peek
into the teacup made of bone china
the best from the local Chinatown
I see
a black of rippling hopes,
sliver of jumbled alphabets
howling pack of wild grey wolves
on a road less spoken, less trodden
Tea leaves talk
they speak of a nervous lady
whose pink lips have touched
places darker than the alleys of Chinatown
She’s sitting still
her eyes are fixed
like I’m God
the writer of her destiny
She has a fear
that dream of a woman
with a flimsy white gown
and a lantern on the right hand
a broken string of pearls in the other
I see it
vivid as ever
Pink smeared all over her face
except the two faithful lips of hers
Wished for once the leaves
had lied
but they never do
they never do.
18
Geethanjali Rajan
~~
the colour of earth
on a farmer’s bare back –
multigrain bread
cloud seeding ~
he sees rows of paddy
up there
seniors’ home
grandma enquires about
her button roses
~~
Hema Ravi
19
Jack Galmitz
The flatness of the surface defies
The flatness of the surface defies
the weight and dimensions of objects
in the world. Instead, it deifies
a realm of spirit without space
and thus time. That is why
the Chinese ideogram for poem shi - which is composed of two root words –
one for ‘word’ and one for ‘temple.’ is
a picture word construction that needs
no other dimension than the surface of bamboo.
We have this, too, in Egyptian art, Byzantine art,
early Christian art, in the verses from the Koran
on the domes of Islamic temples and the lack
of images in synagogues. No graven images.
Thus we engage in contemplation of objects
and subjects on the page as if it were a temenos.
This is our quandary. Although our words are not
things, the creation of a sacred space says otherwise.
20
Janaki Nagaraj
ILLUSION
Hook, line and sinker
Am being lured every time
Love, an illusion
The gravity pulls me in
Like a bee to a flower
Duped, I wither and perish.
21
Janak Sapkota
restlessall night
laments of gusty wind
new moona filament lamp
flushes the courtyard
a white herondistinct yet distant
mourners in black
far, apart –
in darkness
trees touch
long days of rainin a garden, it peers
a pale rose
22
Jyothsna Phanija
Unrecorded Alphabet
Sticking dust
unseen on her red nail polish.
Fingers to find the alphabet
from the mistakenly sequenced keyboard.
Ophelia took hours for typing the love letter.
The spell-check and layout
Properly worked.
“Schizophrenic, the age is,
We are one… in ghostly hours”
She emailed
her blocked account.
23
Kinga Fabó
A fül
Mintha egy szentélyhez járulnának, úgy
jönnek, jönnek a füleimhez. Még jó,
hogy szép nagy füleim vannak.
Mélyek, öblösek.
Jönnek a csípő- és kebelméretek.
Jön a magányos. Neki a férjem kell.
Jön a családanya. Ő férjezett, frigid.
Ha éppen nem jön, nyelveket
tanul, meg utazik.
A leszbikus? Ő el se jön. Pedig őt
elcsábítanám. Jobb híján a fülem
hegyezné önmagát. (Jó nagy.)
Nőies nőt elvből nem hívok meg.
Férfiakat sem. Hozzájuk
én megyek.
The Ears
As if my ears were the sacraments, a crowd
appears, appears before them. Lucky
I have nice big ears.
Deep and hollow.
The hip and breast sizes are coming.
Here comes the lonely one. She wants my husband.
Here comes the housewife. She's married, frigid.
When she doesn't come, she learns languages,
travels.
The lesbian? Doesn't come at all. Though
De nekik is csak a füleim kellenek.
És a szájak? Be nem állnak.
És a fülem? A fülem, az néma.
Csak a fülbevalómat cserélem néha.
A fülemet, azt nem hagyom.
I would seduce her. If nothing comes of it, my
Ears would perk themselves. (Big as they are.)
Feminine women I don't invite on principle.
Nor any men. I go
to them.
But all they want is my ears.
And the mouths? Nonstop talkers.
And my ears? My ears are mute.
I change only my earrings from time to time.
My ears are mine.
(Translated by Michael Castro and Gábor G. Gyukics)
24
Kinga Fabó
Jeszenyina-Duncan tánca
Mint a szobrok, a szobrok. Napfényes, hosszú mozdulatok.
Alig volt mosolya. De ha volt, az nagyon.
A rítus szépsége tört át a ritmuson.
Csak forgott és forgott és forgott.
Könnyedén siklott. Lobogott.
Szavának súlya volt. De szólni nem tudott.
Forgott a kígyóbűvölő és forgott a sál,
forgott a félkör, a tengerpart és forgott a lány,
külön a táncosnő és külön a tánc ...
Mások ünnepe ez:
a nem hasonult múlt.
Ő az illatot táncolta hozzá.
Yesenina-Duncan Dancing
Just like sculptures, the sculptures. Sunkissed, long-drawn motions.
She hardly smiled. But if she did, then very much so.
The beauty of the rite broke through the rhythm.
She only whirled and whirled and whirled.
Gliding so gracefully. Flaming.
Her words carried weight. But she was unable to speak.
The snake-charmer was whirling and the shawl was whirling,
the half circle was whirling and the sea-shore and the girl,
the dancer apart and the dance apart…
It’s other people’s feast:
a past that didn’t get alike.
She was dancing the fragrance to it.
(Translated by: N. Ullrich Katalin)
25
Michelle D'costa
RUMOURS
Her forehead
Saved from hindering eyebrows
Her eyes, iris and sclera alike
Her nose like a slender cat
Squatting, defecating
Faeces gathering like a moustache
Of a young boy- Almost a shadow
Over her lips so chapped
Struggling to protect her protruding (still white) teeth
From getting soiled;
Lice from her bald scalp
Travel like an army of ants
Down her collarbones
In search of shelter,
She lacks earlobes
So she hooks earrings onto her ample chin
And doesn’t mind the red
That trickles down
To her shirt front
Making amoeba patterns
Despite my insecurities
I go to her
Brandishing a candle
She turns around
And I see her ordinariness
What I had envisioned
Behind her back;
Her beauty
Through the eyes of the world
Melts away like candle wax
Stinging my hand in the process
26
Neelima Vinod
Song
There is a place where my voice can go,
The wise men call it swar, the perfect pitch
and I sing in tune like an instrument.
I cared little for the song that flew out of words by some poet
I did not think the voice needed a room of her own.
I did not know.
When I sang in the house, no longer mine,
They told me to stop, with mother gone and father
what songs are left to sing?
How do tunes play out?
How dare?
Then what had come so easily like melted butter on a knife,
or a river rolling out of my mouth, thought a little,
then a little more, until the thinking and reflection
turned a diamond into rock. I could no longer sing,
maybe I could hum a tune like an old woman remembering a bhajan,
No more.
27
Peter Cowlam
Half Way World
Since in a dream I’ve foreseen everything,
I disagree – since in my sleep I have or had
A point of view. In the world or in the past, I know
That I have climbed your tower and fallen to the fields
Or streets a hundred times, or drowning seen electric serpents
Writhing on the surface of a lake. I half suspected
Then that it was real, but lost it in this retrospective mood,
This vague connection with the world. Sometimes, the recollection
Of a fruitless correspondence. Or how with easy unconcern
I had routinely shuffled through the dirty streets of North West 10.
A house, a birth, a whole fragmented history, and so…the world
A kind of world, a halfway thing…
28
Priya Anand
Odour
I soap myself as the water courses over me
Liters of water gush down the drain
I spray perfume in the air and walk into it
Touch the nozzle to my pulse points
Notes of amber and orchid
A hint of the Mediterranean
Coil around my body
Envelop me in a cocoon
I found it in the latest edition of Cosmo
Darling, I simply must have it, I said
When my husband went on a business trip to the US
I'll make quite an entrance
At the monthly kitty party
A tentative knock on the door
“Amma, did you call me?” she says
“Yes, I need you to adjust the pleats of my sari”
As she bends, a whiff of her odour, ripe and rank
The perfume of sleeping in an airless room
Next to an alcoholic husband
Who forces himself on her
Only to roll away when he is fulfilled
Of rusty pipes which gush out air and dribbles of smelly water
Of spices and exotic sauces that she cooks with
In designer kitchens that are not her own
I wrinkle my nose
“You really smell,” I say
“Don't you have a bath every day?
All it takes is a little soap and water”
She shakes her head mutely
Her mind is elsewhere
She is anxious to get home early
She must mark her place
In the queue with buckets
The water lorries are due today
29
The Security Guard
Priya Anand
They walk past in indifference
not even a glance in acknowledgement
At the Security Guard
in his stained uniform
Two shifts past and
no sign of a replacement.
Swaying slightly with fatigue
an ache deep in his arthritic bones
Clicking and clacking
like the Bamboo thicket in the garden
That blooms oblivious to
its impending death.
Late into the rain fed night
convex droplets glistening on his moth eaten sweater
Sitting on a rickety chair with taped legs
his cell phone radio for company
He slumbers amongst gleaming road monsters
slips into REM sleep
Dreams of His remote Himalayan village
with its Monolithic mountains and crouched valleys
Devoid of young men
inhabited by the dying, the dead and the abandoned
His now middle-aged wife with glass-shard eyes
has replaced him with another.
Three sharp blasts rent the air
his startled gaze blinded
By the high beam eyes of a looming automobile
at the curlicued gates
Residents returning from a party
expecting immediate attention
He is the security guard after all
'sleeping on the job' is not listed in his roster of duties.
Dawn drags its feet and
the building casts off its lethargy
A buzzing beehive of domestics serving their masters
all part of an interdependent but unequal ecosystem
He is part of the milieu and continues on a third shift for
there is no sign of his replacement yet.
30
Priya Anand
Deconstruction
I walk briskly
In my Nike gear and running shoes
My headphones tune out the outside
Up and down and around the inclined streets
Around the quaint and upscale neighborhood
I keep my head down and pace my steps
In tune to the pulsing music
On the fringes they squat
Besides construction shells
Groups of men women and children
In faded decrepit clothing
Waiting for the supervisor
Who leers at the women
Yells at the women
And swats the children
As if they were pesky flies
Tracing a path around a garbage pile
I turn away as I walk past them
Unable to meet their naked gaze
A mixture of longing, lust and perspicacity
Thinking what is mine could be theirs
A twist of fate and I could be squatting
My world view from the bottoms up
I walk past on my 6000 rupees footwear
Tapping an uneven beat as I attempt to outpace their stares
I turn a corner and they disappear from sight
My hearbeat and my pace slackens
I walk into my posh apartment where they resided before me
31
Saima Afreen
A TORN NOTE
The moon
sounds of lilies
Frosted in the violin
Nest
bleeding womb of colons
Wail of papyrus in dripping n o o n
A scalpel tears
the algebra of Braille...
My shadows fall apart
Thin sunlight s...i...m...m...e...r...s in rice pot
She sews the remaining posies
On dew dipped blouses
Inside hijaab
Little tulips fight
For Spring
diaries you wrote
Still smell of camphor
Your letters sway on c-l-o-t-h-e-s-l-i-n-e
A blast somewhere
In visible cities
Atlantis appears on your swollen skin
Tin Kettle sweats of Shopian
Glossary:
Hijaab – a head covering worn by Muslim women
Shopian – A small town in Kashmir also known as the Valley’s Apple Orchard
32
Sarita Jenamani
Drowsiness
The smoggy scenario of the day
The movement entwined with a chain
The sigh standing on its hind legs
like a wild horse
The collection of fatigued feet
revolving around the well of time
have struggled violently
in the strong net of the night
The city clock roared
Perhaps it is the wee hours of the night
A skeleton like cactus-hand
is tapping on my door
a stream of ants
are running on my eyelids
Enfold me in your arm
I hate to be melted under
this jaundiced moon
Once again echoes the chirp of dead sparrows
the silence expanded to centuries
is simply unbearable
My bed drowses
and I have to return to it
Who knows
whether the sleep will come or not
Who knows
whether the day will break or not
33
Sharmada Shastry
When lips began gathering dust,
When lips began gathering dust,
pale winters sewn together
flit across the bare walls
We don't talk. Words find home in the corners of my mouth that can be birthed into being
only in a moment of love. We let the windows rattle and crack open the midnight moon
onto our bed. It is one AM and you hold my shivering jaws together in your palms.
The cold bites away into my bones, denuded of flesh. You excavate your pocket and
fish out a half-smoked cigarette. We break into a smile at the same instance and giggle
like children building sand-castles by the sea.
We look for the taste of water.
We look for anything that can keep us warm
I pull out old sweaters from the shelves,
keepsakes from bygone lovers.
You look around the room,
find nothing
but yourself.
You have given yourself to me. Even in a world that could leave one jaded
and wandering, you leave a parched me tasting dew drops that fall from the underbelly
of a leaf. You teach me things I wouldn't have learned in the violence of things around me.
We learn how to love in its absence. We learned how to give, by letting go.
Contd…
34
Sharmada Shastry
As rooms linger in memories,
midnights don't open
up to
alleys of desire.
Minutes later,
we find ourselves
buried in
skin
bits of teeth
storm
whispers
apologies
and
shadow lines.
As morning peels away the night,
the rain softens out the hardness
we have built overnight.
It's time to leave.
We have bled into each other.
35
Shloka Shankar
baby blanket...
to think she was
once this tiny
broken smile...
I offer her
a band-aid
Chinese takeout...
chopsticks duel
each other
pale moon...
I drift into
dreamless slumber
36
Shobhana Kumar
pigeon
necks…
question
marks
against
the
sky
37
Souradeep Roy
like dogs
the dog stretches its hind legs
much like the way a woman stretches it like a V
to let the man in.
but the dog does it to pee on the street.
and its an inverted V, something like
^
i’ve seen humans aping the dog’s posture
in a manner even more similar
when I saw a withered grandmother
sitting on her haunches
inside an uplifted saree
shitting and peeing
off the footpaths of Chandni Chowk
discharging yellowish liquid.
now don’t tell me humans are unlike animals.
38
Souradeep Roy
the bird grew out of the nest
the sky has become the ceiling,
the world four walls,
the orbits a rotating fan.
what saves me from the earthquake
Is the laundry man with pirate teeth.
He asks what the date is, (It’s 8th Aug) and seriously ponders with a twitched eyebrow“Wasn’t the world supposed to end today?” The eyebrow remains in the same position.
While folding my jeans he wonders if it’ll end the next second. I remember I have to check
the pockets. A tissue paper comes out. More pirate teeth. He narrates the story
of a-nirodh-that- once-came-out-of-a-pocket. Following him I smile
a first smile and remember that nirodh is a condom.
Now,
I laugh.
smile has become a stranger.
II
The flies are now engaged
in a left-over roti.
When I sit in a chair
struggling not to fall apart
they fly over and sit
on my fair legs.
My fair legs
are now a left-over.
39
Souradeep Roy
III
Time must be killed.
Not spent, but killed.
After all, boredom is a way of life;
the most natural way of life.
Sleep is not a synonym for rest,
but a weapon to kill time.
IV
AAnnyy uunnaatttteennddeedd aarrttiiccllee ssuucchh aass ttiiffffiinn bbooxx,,
bbrriieeffccaassee,, bag, tthheerrmmooss oorr ttrraannssiissttoorr ccoouulldd bbee aa
bboommbb..
I am all that mentioned in the marquee
in the Delhi metro.an unattended everything.
But if I blow myself,
no one will bother.
This is how insignificant I am.
40
Somendra Singh Kharola
Predator
A winter draught blows.
An acorn
stored deep in a burrow
wobbles atop the heap
and falls.
Fairy Tale
And so I asked the nuanced artist who was sculpting water,
‘When will you go home?’
The nuanced artist chiseled away a liter of water and replied,
‘I have none.’
‘Of course you do, it is the one whose glass you shattered
with your bare fists and then ran away, blood
dripping from your hands and splotching a trail on grass.’
The nuanced artist slammed his fists on the table
and roared, ‘That blood is of a sinner, the blood
of a fugitive in the forest who will soon be tracked
down by the hounds.’
To which I smiled and said,
‘Or the blood of a fairy tale, which, like bread crumbs could lead you back home.’
To which, the nuanced artist collapsed to the ground and wept.
And beneath all those nuances everyone is so simple,
even those who have tamed the inertia of water.
41
Subhadip Maitra
White Appetite
White has become my color.
The color of rice,
fragrant, noble
even when served at a pavement shack.
Come, sit here with the multitude,
here you can become humane,
while gnawing hunger creeps.
Watch a cabbie, a construction labor, a slut
sitting with poker face
All conjoined in stainless steel plates
and the fume Arising from the epiphany
of white appetite.
42
Subhadip Maitra
Derelict
Rain and fog in Calcutta hides your loneliness,
you are not the only jaywalker, and the pavement
with bickering mongrels hides its leper skin.
Here you are stuck
forever,
for good,
Item- number lookalikes and betel chewing cabbies
racking your brain,
fades away while you walk,
like a knight with a pike (umbrella that is!)
and splashing rain types out labyrinth of desire.
To a sugar candy leftist dandy
You don’t know, I always tuck an invisible rose on my pocket,
While I walk on the muddy streets of Calcutta,
And while you straddle the stream of ever busy populace,
I quietly cross the road,
move from the eloquence to peace of coffee bowl.
And I hate enterprising men,
Isn’t a man with a chillum, reclined, consumed in his thoughts
Is the pinnacle of beauty?
Slumber percolating in my blood like cheap Indian whisky
I will take a small walk to eternity.
43
Sudha K F
The Heaviness of Being
Then she felt the heaviness of being.
No, not lightness of being, but heaviness of being.
And that heaviness felt good.
She did eat a lot that day;
She thought she could appreciate even a morsel of plain rice so well.
An image of a moram comes to her head;
{It is a sorting device used to separate black stones and the yellowish-white rice, she recalls.}
She has lost count of the people armed with morams around her.
They ask her: Why don’t you buy a moram too?
“No”, she says (only in her head);
“I still want to try the rice; I don’t want a moram.
I wasn’t ever given the chance to be either white rice or black stone. I don’t want one.”
She felt, at that moment ( probably only at that moment) ,
That she has overpowered the morams.
What more, it was accompanied by that heaviness of being.
She did eat a lot that day;
She thought she could appreciate even a morsel of plain rice so well.
44
Sudha K F
To The Non Believers
We seem to have emerged, a little late though,
From the yellow tattered pages of a Marquez novel.
But well, let me remind you,
That I love the smell of those old pages.
I believe in those words, probably because of that.
So here is the answer to the riddle ,
O ye puzzled non-believers!
Here is why I believe in this love:
Because he loves me for my smell.
And me his odour.
Too cheesy for your knitted eyebrows?
Oh, what can I do for that smirk to disappear?
I desperately learnt to love all your accusations,
I diligently researched the right Answers,
I studied the Science of Reasoning,
Sigh! I realize I am a miserable failure.
Instead, I am going to dig my head
Into the middle pages of an old book nearby
Not necessarily Marquez, the famous one.
45
Sudha K F
My bathroom
Bathroom.Clean-ing room.Peace room.
Water runs; eyes open and shut.
Both waters become one.
I like the oneness.
I want the oneness with her: the one who has gone;
The one who has slept.
Body is cleaned; mind is cleansed
For dirt to fill it again.
Nice fragrant dirt: Memories.
Memories that smell of starched saris, revolt and love.
Lie it is for that world outside,
But not in my bathroom.
(Coz I can pick my nose here.
Coz I can talk here (to myself and to my dear buckets)
Coz I can rule as the goddess of contradictions here.
Coz I can look at my long tresses, curse them and love them at the same time).
Madness peeps out of the tiny little mirror on the wall
Blowing a bubble to my blue face.
(Bipolar is what they call it).
"Only truths here", the sign says.
Bathroom, My Truth-room, My Queendom;
With yellow tiles.
46
Trishna Mohanty
Winter Rains
I am sitting by the window,
wrapped in the cold embrace of this winter evening;
the goosebumps on my skin lie,
they defy the truth of the warmth I feel within.
I have shivered in the mirth of your buried promises.
Destiny’s cackle has reverberated through my sentient being
for one too many nights.
Your cold heart makes everything feel warmer.
Nothing can break me now.
My mind conjures a memory from clandestine folds in time-a vision of us laughing.
The wind, as if on cue,
enthralls my senses with the fragrance of wet earth;
sparring Gods are about to bleed.
I shed a futile tear,
why is every beautiful thing transient?
As your eyes light up with joy,
so does the sky.
And as we cry laughing,
the rain rushes to meet my skin.
Tomorrow morning, the earth would have dried,
and my eyes too, perhaps…
Why is every beautiful thing transient?
Maybe the rules will break for once,
and we will laugh again.
The November rain outside my window seems to agree.
47
Vinita Agrawal
November
November is in my lap like an old shoe
Nowhere to walk, nowhere to go
Tattered, torn, worn, abandoned
Lonely like a forgotten imprint, sinking in the sands of time
November is in my lap like a scraggly wet bird
Shivering, burrowing in my thighs for warmth
When the sun comes out, I will teach it to fly
Until then it gazes me with terrified eyes, makes me cry
November is a milestone
Gathering my surrender in lonely miles
Making an autumn heap of promises, a bonfire of hopes
Its face is creased and wrinkled, its face is blue
48
Vinita Agrawal
Home
Homes have no walls
no rooms, no furniture, no thresholds
Nothing through which you might enter
and nothing from which you might want to exit
Because homes are not houses
Homes are built in the eyes
Erected by naked, hungry hearts
In skies, in dew drops, lichen, mosses,
Sometimes on parched, parted lips
Sometimes inside the darkening irises of your eyes
Homes are tender assembles of empty air
Sorted by the linear breaths you lend to me;
Built for unborn little feet to run
And for smiles to sun themselves on broad porticos
My home is in the centre of your palms
Sunk in the wells of your destiny
That you carry like a liquid in your eyes
Or like an abode in your hand, my very own delta
Between the nine mounds of the universe
49
Zahira Rahman
Spectral zones
When we travel in two different spheres
There is no friction in the skies
The star spangled dust may not fly
But a sparkling tear, diamond-like might fall into the dark lonely
space
owned by Time.
50
51
52

Artist: Shantanu Mitra - RædLeafPoetry

Transcription

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