ANOTHER POLISH FOR MY NAILS promises and promises give it a miss It’s unsure why you promised me the moon and, doted on my nails the black stain of your promises I live with the regret yet another five years…
WHAT POETRY MEANS TO ERNESTINA IN PERIL What should poetry mean to a woman in the hills as she sits one long sloping summer evening in Patria, Aizawl, her head crammed with contrary winds, pistolling the clever stars that seem…
Praise the sun, powerful yet unwavering in its journey across the sky, light pulsing through clouds, mists; life sustaining. Praise the earth as it moves on its axis; inner and outer cores holding on to each other, partners on the…
Gandhi was walking in the sun that had survived Naokhali. ‘Come, have some rest.’ Gandhi turned back: It was a shady tree. ‘You? It is not yet time for me to rest, ‘replied Gandhi. The tree complained: ‘The world is…
MY MURDERER AND I The murderer loses no morality Never risk a thought Pitched on the terrain of war Thoughts are ammunition We can discuss if the murder happened But never doubt the morality of my murderer He gently caressed…
1 The poem was accused asanti national and rejected like a US visa applicant from Muslim country It wanted to prove as nationalist It started with Vandematharam the continuing lines were only nouns of the independence struggles in which the…
Mosquito bites scab over and the itch fades. Oud notes fade through the patio door into the night and smoke escapes from your lips to mine. I inhale. I look over the railing into the night at the lights below.…
My mother came home one day without her uterus. The doctor took it out. Like someone heard me say Let’s act it out, act it out physically. I was the baby who never cried The snake on your breast who…
companions on my early morning ride milkmen ladies taught by lady and i to put education in unwilling heads who have reluctantly left their unyielding beds early morning joggers with pot bellies to hide dogs in hoary colours brown black…
The Naalayira-divya Prabandham is the sacred collection of 4000 hymns of the twelve alwars or the saint-Poets of the bhakti school of Sri Vaishnavism. The prabandham is divided into four parts —Mudhalaayiram, Thirumozhi, Thiruvaaimozhi and Iyarrpa. The different parts explain…
Love Generosity : A Translator’s Note on Avvaiyar Children in Tamil Nadu grow up reading Avvaiyar, a poet whose work scholars usually place in the 12th century. You can often hear grade-school students repeating after their teachers the opening statements…
Sickle Joins the crescent In the heavens. Star returns to the eyes of children. Hammer alone, aching from an unromantic genesis, starts blowing on the nail heads fated to hang history in pictures. FIGURING You: A dot of sun I:…
