Those were hot days of shrinking skirts
And wet nights of sticky stains,
That quickly quickly burst up into
Summer F.L.A.M.E.S. of hide and seek.
Suddenly-tall girls of good repute
Had started stealing hearts from us.
And stuffing them into brassieres,
Were forcing us to stare at them:
Intent, from one bulge to the next,
Seeking our hidden pumping organ.
She folds language itself
Flat on bond paper.
Her creases enslave creases
In relief of relief
Around brows and skies.
Sails shimmer under shut eyes,
Rains flap over shut ears,
Drool crawls out of wrinkles
Along flapped-over cheeks
To rabbit-eared lips
Shimmering in aerodynamics.
Her crane breaks fish-cages.
Her dog burrows through links.
Her poetry blintzes outward,
Box-pleating rhythms,
Trapping release in flexagons.
Meaning tails kite folds
Unwinding in figure-eights.
No wonder her kites tear the sky.
When my lows come slow,
Vowels howl as wolves
And words draw sword,
Forcing me to listen, silent.
My smile stinks of slime,
Of bread stuck in the beard
Of a crooked sage for ages.
Retribution seems in order
For my arch nemesis
When shadows show ads
Of live, aimed, evil media
That has sewn and tied
The news edit.
I’m reminded of almoners,
Playing their roles, man,
While others starve for vaster,
Steamier emirates.
e.g. Ron may be a goner,
But he’ll smuggle muggles
From Antioch to China,
As Tom Marvolo Riddle
Declares, “I am Lord Voldemort”,
While a solitary royalist
Rambles about marbles
So golden, they’re longed for.
It seems a sesame lets
A peon open caves of wonder,
As a time signal tells him
When the mail gets in.
But a rendition of arms
Turns Mars inordinate,
And stern graders
Regard rents they’ll pay
For the ship in disuse, issued
To them by the posted despot
Whose ragged dagger
Dilates the details.
I want to shatter threats
That waste my sweat,
Eroding my ignored ego,
And lease an easel to
Paint, however inapt,
An untidy nudity that isn’t
So alarming to the marginal
As a tailored idolater
Lamenting alignment
With the Devil who lived.
You flash e4, I play e6.
You flick d4, I play e6.
You flank c4, I play e6.
Your knight f3, my pawn e6.
Your knight c3, my pawn e6.
You do your thing, I do e6.
Completely yours, the center stretch.
I’ll kick in Dutch or kiss in French.
I’ll breakthrough when you least defend,
And have the center in the end,
Or, cramp in under your attack:
No matter what, I’m playing Black.
It’s you who have a point to prove.
It’s up to you to make a move.
Her letters sway on breezy days.
The T and L and T in “tilt”
Do tilt at different angles steep.
Her mail becomes Savannah grass
That hides a predator inside.
I found her but I lost me
And everything she cost me.
I lost her but I found me
And all the grace around me.
She loves me still. I love her,
But place myself above her.
She does it too, I know her.
She owes me space. I owe her.
On starry nights, we miss us.
In breathless dreams, we kiss us.
The Ether then reminds us:
In each of us It finds us.
My Grandma has an expertise
In picking things throughout her day.
She starts the morning picking flowers,
And mostly, Jasmines: Crape and Night.
Or as she calls them: Tagara
And Holy Gangashiuli.
And then she picks at broken teeth
With bark of Neem and Babool trees,
And picks her hair for errant lice,
Though not a one is ever found.
And picks her greying stack of sieves
To pick the stony grit from grain.
And then she picks her plastic throne
And picks a spot outside our gate
To bask in sun and pick up fights
With neighbour men who haven’t picked
Their cattle’s droppings from our yard.
And then she picks her plastic throne
And brings it back inside the house.
And picks the paper for the news
And picks a piece to grumble at.
And when she gets no answer from
Her busy son, his busy wife,
Their busy kids, and busy maid,
She picks the phone to pick the brain
Of Daughter Dear who has no work
Except to poke her nose about
In other people’s laundry tub.
And so my Grandma picks that nose
And gets the gooey gossip out
And so contented, picks a time
To call this Daughter Dear again.
And all this done, she picks her food
And picks a fault that isn’t there
And picks a story for the kids
Who take the bullet for their Mom
And take their Grandma somewhere else,
Who picks up on their ruse and still
Adores the adulation from
Whoever picks a moment for
A little talk, a little play,
That keeps Irrelevance away.
I prize the things I lose and say,
“For granted I had taken them.”
I mourn the loss of what is gone
Again forgetting what remains.
The voice is lost; its music lives.
The rose is dead; its leaves are wreathed.
Her body’s far; her touch is close.
And love itself has slumbered on.
The poet, Ozymandian,
Is right in predicting my flaw.
Lamenting, though, “O World! O Life!”
He moved my grief to glum delight.
She ripped the pocket on my breast
And stole along with everything
The loaded metaphors I flipped
Before I took my decision
To write or not about a thing
I knew I had no right over.
It’s good I keep my shards of heart
Among the shuffled decks of pain
In pockets stitched on to my sleeves
To pull or pack away a spade
Depending on the hand I’m dealt.
I call or raise or fold it all
As paper planes in pockets full
Of paper marigolds in bloom:
The crumpled leaves of struckthrough lines
That cut her when she tore at me.
It’s crazy how I remember
The taste of things I haven’t had
For years and years of gluttony
Deposited in body flab.
The way a flake of mud would melt
Inside the mouth if placed with care,
When plucked with gentler fingers from
The groovy treads on cycle tyres
The morning after rainy rides.
The grating texture lasting from
A local brand of hardened chalk.
The kind that never comes with signs
Of “Baby Safe” upon its box.
The kind which adds a sandy punch
If taken with a pepper corn,
A sandiness of longer life,
Unrivalled but for Hajmola,
The spicy mango pills of “Tchss!”
When taken twenty at a go.
The bitter ticklish danger from
A reddish ant allowed to crawl
Upon my tongue, as passage rite,
A minute whole before I could
Release it from my misery
To prove to neighbour kids I would
Uphold their sacred trust in me.
The sticky salty ickiness
Of Uncle’s peepee thrust in me.
Minakhi Misra 