Shoili Kanungo, ‘Flight’Whorls as a verb: move in a twisted and convoluted fashion
small leaves
small leaves
under your pillow
just after dawn
sure enough
there’s pollen
on my lips
from the edge
of my sleep
i can see
the snails
in your ears
curled up in sleep
i’m partially sad
but i wish
i knew
when or why
a woman
whorls into wood
–Salil Chaturvedi
Ten poems
1
When we meet
The distance between us is several cigarettes’ smoke
When we don’t meet
There is only a cup of tea with one cube of sugar.
That is what the experience is
2
If you open your borders,
I will immigrate to you
Without visa.
My case is not political.
I fled as a lover.
If I get back home,
They will sew up my tongue and lips:
Wordless love
And without home.
3
The mist of your words
Envelopes my imagination
Look at our shared dreams
They are so close to each other.
But your hands have been
Far from me for a long time.
4
I was born and I was crying.
I lived and I was screaming.
I want to leave this world with a smile Like Mona Lisa’s.
5
When I emit the perfume of love
I am better than a full factory
Tear me to pieces like petals,
And ship me to Paris,
Then call me Juliet.
I will be your best-selling perfume
6
If an earthquake cracks the land anywhere
My heart will split too.
My heart thought the earth is like a cradle,
Its quake will sing a lullaby to my pain.
Oh earth, sing happily to your mistakes.
7
When you look at me,
You don’t clearly see my pain
To understand my looks
You need to listen to the sparrows
They speak the same language.
8
Enriched uranium sleeps with me now
Not your portrait any more.
I kiss it.
Each city is a white crow’s smoke
My dream of a nuclear nightmare is
Ever growing hot.
9
All the options are on the table:
To draw the morning with your words.
To run alongside your absence.
To find a metaphor like your hands or lips
You still pour yourself into the glass
And I drink your shadow.
10
When I was sleeping
The nurses came.
The clouds came too.
There was the sound of a waterfall everywhere
The nurses left
And I stayed on the northern side
Everything inside it was new and fresh
And it had a wet smell.
–Sanaaz Davood Zadeh Far
“Saheli stop! You are breaking them.”
“No. They were already broken”
My leash is tied to the heart that made me.
An umbilical thread tying two fragmented lives.
“You breathe the life I could not have”, she told me.
I believed her.
I tend my wings,
rage at rusted iron grills.
A snail outgrows her shell.
Mother, she asked her, did you know I have gills too?
She taught me to fear water.
You taught me to swim.
I go to her room at night,
kiss the forehead he should have kissed.
When she opens her eyes to look into mine,
I choke her with the hands that stroke my sky.
“Oh but didn’t you know?” the bird asks the egg,
“You made me, to kill you.”
“Mother, you are free now”, I tell her
and wear the bangles I made her break.
–Saheli Khastagir
Black magic
My brother, a priest in the making, catches me
reading Harry Potter. The church disapproves.
I’ve to confess before the Holy Communion.
Hasn’t he heard of black magic beyond books?
(i)The price a family paid, when they returned
from vacation. To a black doll on their door.
Their dogs became cats and walked out
knowing they couldn’t afford them anymore.
Their parrots’ vocal chords used to royal songs,
tone-deaf to the homeless, broke open
their cages, pecked at their owners’ heads
for jumping them with poverty. They waited
outside windows of rich lonely kids to slip in
when the kids wanted to jump out, settling in
comfortably in their new homes. Not a fleck
of recognition in their eyes when their previous
owners’ passed by. Birds remember like dogs.
They do. They just pretend they don’t.
(ii)Or about the girl who said ‘No’ to a guy who’d
never heard the word before. Her teeth fall,
hijacked buildings. Calcium powder fills her mouth.
Her hair decides there are better places to reside,
tired of conventional, they leech onto her toes.
She now sits in a dark room, waiting for the curse
to return to its owners. (iii) Or the man who went
to Dubai on an Arab’s leash only to return to
a black leash back home, vomiting blood.
–Michelle D’costa
Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
Turmeric -the smell of my paint brush
plump with still born sunbeams
leaking into the morphine haze of my city
Shades of sorrow bury her face,
thin grass, one that can never grow in my concrete soil
crown lips patiently waiting for words
Eyes fixed at the bottom of space
and above them
a fallen bridge
between two capsized boats
moored(fashionably)at the shore of her forehead
Come alive, you ancient beauty
for I have tasted light and water in the womb of your wounds
I wish to be faithful to details
every stroke- a dive into a body history gave you
each shadow- a dance into the chaos of creation
Blood-worms push their way up your
barb-veined neck
they languish on your
white skeletal shirt
Yet, you, so loving to yourself
such perfection in the creeks between the hair stands,
the middle parting, the polished braids,
crisp translucence of
hushed wings,
pale purple blossoms gliding across
intense green
The green light of ocean outside the cracked windowpanes of my eyes
willow-spine- the air in my breath
sunless pools on marshland skin,
pills, syrups, bone-fires,
my door closed upon the promises of the world
And through its clefts, entered you
washing with colours
roots leaping across latitudes
Once again, I dip my brush into the ink of the night
its tongue, berry-black
I paint familiar companions of the female species-
one furry monkey, an arched cat, its glossy nose
a hummingbird fixed at your chest like an ossified relic
You are complete
now eat some air
grace the throne of my godless country
as I
with
bent knees,
curfewed eyes,
folded hands,
dressed in feathers of icy mist,
probably, a little drunk on the honey of dawn
pray for a joyful exit
–Jhilam Chattaraj
