The Girls Who Read Poems (For Shalini) They are everywhere though very few making a place for themselves among millions of girls of this vast country they are everywhere despite abiding by the strict familial instructions that expect them to reach college and then come straight back home In spite of the extremely charismatic Indian […]

Curfew (After William Carlos Williams)

 For J
 
They unblooded your palms I heard. 
Left you on hardwood floor and sunk 
your bed where you once rested on your man’s torso, in his sweat. They 
unknotted your dreads uncurled your lips 
plucked the silver from your arms unfleshed 
your thighs struck the thick glasses from your […]

ओ रेतीले देश के अजनबी ओ रेतीले देश के अजनबी मै देखती हूँ उस रेगिस्तान को अपने सपनो में जिसकी रेत बिखरी रहती है मेरे बिस्तर पर जिस्म को रगडती है बेतहाशा घाव रिसते हैं पर दिखते नहीं… भीगती हूँ जब भी बारिश में मेरे पाँव उस धूप में निकल जाते हैं जो रेगिस्तान पर […]

पोलिश कवि ज़्बीग्न्येव हेर्बेर्त के लिए छह कविताएँ नेलकटर नेलकटर आदमियों से चिढ़ता है, वह एक भूखा जंतु है लेकिन आप उसे कीट-पतंगों या सरिसृपों में से किसी भी समूह में नहीं रख सकते। अपनी आंतों की बीमारी से दांत किटकिटाता वह पनी चिड़चिड़ाहट के बीच भी आपके हाथ की सुस्ती पर तेज़ निगाह रखता […]

Burked Ballads Do you not remember me at all? I am the hill that never sleeps, the tree that lies by the street, listless, longing to breathe; the vine that tangles across your fence, waiting on death and its trail of savage footsteps. Do you not remember me at all? I am the forest that […]

EAT Cooking for one The onion slices are concentric, Stump-like, circles grooved in. They do not bespeak age though, Just as my ankles do not. The long, hard carrots stew quietly, The pot contains them well. I protect myself From the stove-flame’s licks. Peas, parsley, broccoli and bread Banquet the old tablecloth; Medievally spread, That […]

Bollywood Soundbite: We Are What Love? In there, we string palms. Weed-stung, the melancholies of withered gourd-seed scatter, announcing the auspicious end. No black-mouthed villain awaits in the post-production darkroom. Instead, we encounter the razing of outtakes and silences. Movement finds no arrhythmia here; to view is an act of repudiating direction. I manifest the […]

The Empty Swing that Creaks at Night as a guest to your memories, i often lingered on a darkening road careful not to step on the grass. Invited to watch through a bright square window a table set for three how often I wonder about her that I am not as she flits past the […]

Smothered The mind is a stuffed animal: crammed with sardines, nailed onto thoughts, jammed into silence. Hanging from the wall, it stares bulgy-eyed yawns and creeps into an unfriendly body. It now lives inside a face in the shade of a tongue, and breeds. Wake Up Will you wake up with tears of a dead […]

Sem(a)ntics Reverie in Flight: an Airport Poem 1. Hey men with extra large pecs, when Did you stop thinking? And then so many I see walking Tall cellos by their sides Tailed in black tapered coat and tinsel Hey ladies in taffeta scarves And imagined Britney behinds When did you stop dreaming? 2. So the […]