or these animals in
their tiny cages
and the way they go insane
the way money
exchanges hands
twenty bucks he says
as his girlfriend walks into the room
and i think i might know her
i think i may have
been here before
was promised nothing but
came back again
again
learned finally that
hatred was
the only drug i needed
to feel alive
by John Sweet
and sometimes
they write to talk about
discipline
and sometimes to lecture
about the need for
hope
sometimes
i send them pictures
of nuns hanging raped and
murdered from the trees
of central america
we all need to
believe in something
I expect we will always argue about
fixed conclusions of a chair —
that image of defeat so raw
it could be hanging, stinking beef
unabated by the wind.
Call it fealty to dreams, to rivers
drying as we speak —
if you guess I’ll yield
to rolling wheels with arioso grace,
you’ve not met my real soul
who thinks that even tortured legs are still
a poem with missions in their syllables.
You will say I have more strength
than monuments of will I know.
You will say that chancre is a cornered bird
in rooms we never knew were there.
And I will say I’m featherless,
a brittle corpse that mourns
the facts of wings erased.
I will see these body parts
as idle, feckless, useless strings.
Health is blind and illness sees
what happens to the fallen leaf.
I won’t be sitting happily
in soft green sarsaparilla grass
salving the going bone —
reading a book clothed
in chamois leather flesh —
liking who I am inside.
Ugly as this honesty may be
to such defensive love,
I will be staring at lightless stars
glued to an onyx sky — reaching
for a .38, if only in a metaphor.
When you alight from the train
look for Ramdhun, the rickshaw-wala
Tell him you want to go to chowk and
pay him two rupees no more
When you come to the stream
take your shoes in your hands
hold the rope on the log bridge
or you will get wet
A small walk along the cowpath
and you will reach the village chowk
Ask for Vaidji. Everyone knows him
as he gives them medicines
The village boys will follow you
as you will be dressed strangely
in city clothes
Let them
If you see me playing with other girls
or doing some chores
dont stare or call me by name
They will be shocked
Just lower your gaze
and walk past briskly
towards the house
I will follow later
When you meet Baba
talk about other things
not about us
Or he will think you are brash
When he talks about
the days of the British Raj
look impressed
And ask him to tell you more
If you do all this
and dont make mistakes
he will give you my hand
in marriage
[b]Author’s Note[/b]
Ashok Gupta
Jakarta, September 2002
ashok1082 [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk
Published in –
Reflections Jan 03, Liberty Grove Review July 03, Poetry Billboard July 03 (Also Editors Pick)
Accepted by Slowtrains, Muse Apprentice Guild
Three women lounge beside a pool —
comparing scars and silently,
the sizes of a spreading waist.
Laughing at the family branches,
reading stories for reprieve.
Different brands of syllables
to suit the weight of sorrow’s cloth
and longing, well, it hangs
in sacks beneath the eyes
behind their shades —
it hangs in every swaying elm.
Children cackle in the water,
race across the hot cement
to blankets of their mothers’ arms.
Dancing like a moonbeam’s stripe
toward that grand chameleon, death,
unaware that bodies
are tenuous treasures at best.
Denominators of the years
will water sadness tacitly.
The chairs are facing east
where light arrives and doesn’t stay.
One discusses discipline
for nine year olds
who think a mouth is meant
to tell their father off.
Another, brands of tanning cream
that fake a blush for summer months.
The third is reading Lucy Grealy,
hiding titles under towels
that also drape a half a leg.
She’s the one who wears her grief
like stains across a white lapel.
She’s the one reminding them
that shaving pairs of flawless thighs
is running digits through dazzling silk.
The battle went flat like a candle pinched.
One moment you were pale soap
resting on a double bed,
dwindling as our tears raged on.
I’d read to you from hardbound books
as if thin scrolls of verse you loved
could break the silence
rubbing against my quiet screams.
A hospice nurse shut down the drip.
I made her check your pulse
at least a hundred useless times
between my racking sobs.
We’d clean and paint the haunted house
as if a broom or brush
could mitigate this hurt.
My sister and I drew straws.
The short one got your bathroom drawers;
the long one got your greenhouse
full of gangly roots,
scents of old geraniums
smothering the faintest smell
of Nina Ricci clinging to the caving walls.
We passed the trinkets of your life
back and forth across the room.
Bubble-wrapped your china dolls
to open when our strength returned.
Balls of cat hair raced my arms
like moths react to woolen sleeves
we rearrange as seasons fold.
Your shoes became two empty rows
of bobbing boats beside a pier
that’s slipped into a stormy sea.
Whatever we grabbed
scalded our tender hands.
*First Published in Retort Magazine
