Featured Poems

The bartender pulls paper clips off the credit cards, announces the last call.The regulars and the poetry aficionados crowd the bathroom before heading settling up.The poet on the stage reads one last poem while everyone salutes the gods of poetry and beer.

Chalk-dust fingers tap the desk—“1857,” he says, “Revolt or Mutiny?”Outside, kites wrestle the wind,boys chase them down with dust on their ankles.On the board, a map—Countries and borders,borders drawn and redrawn.He rubs a word clean with his sleeve.I look at his hands—they shake, slightly,like history does when touched too much.

Last night,I thought I'll writeA love poem for you.But then I remembered youAnd how you told me that,One fine morning,The sparrows whispered to you,About Faiz's refrainsAnd Darwish's exile.And how they cried to youIn Mandelstam's verses,And Lorca's poems.So I put down my penAnd closed my journal.I opened the windowTo listen to the sparrows sing.But the sparrows,They have left this country.It's been outlawed to singAbout freedom and justice,And hope and revolution.You can only pray a certain wayAnd dress how they deem fit.Humour can get you jailed.The police investigate wit.And history is a felony.So I get back to writingA love poem for you,Wherein, the moonrecites ghazalsAnd the rain burnsThe sun's skin.But it doesn't feel rightFor what use is my poemIf the sparrows can't sing it.

The midnight moanings,the creak creak of an old rustywooden cot,and the croakings of the he-frogs for theshe-frogs -We have lost all in our jobless pursuitand greed.The empty stomachs are listless to theearly morning's pleasure nowThe cot has lost its skeletonThe frogs are all deadThe rains are breeding pesticidesIn a basti of a megacityStill, the door is wide openZamila's tired eyes are droopingNo customer is visiting these daysHer mother is turning her eyes away from the skyA patch of dark cloud is hovering in her bosom.

My sister and I drooledover the aluminium boxwhich my grandmother finallyopened last summer.The box knows all the secretsof my family. It has becomea legend now. before we saw it,we often questioned its existence.But there it was, in metal and space.My grandmother had decided thatthe secrets were not importantenough anymore.So she would distributethem all equally. I was askedto choose first. If allowed, I wouldhave taken the whole boxbut I settled on her green silk saree.It was the first silk he bought mewhen we both went to a South India tour in 1976.Bangalore or Madras.I don’t remember anymore.My grandmother said, in a dry,matter of fact tone.The green silk saree isa symbol of love, that could not be.Now I know why she didn’t wantto keep it anymore.The pallu tells me the story ofthe first time she wore itanticipating a compliment.Instead, she was handed over,‘you look so fat’ and ‘stop eating all the time’.The fall tells the story of the timewhen she accidentally tipped overbut no hand came to rescue.The hand was busy strokingsomeone else. The oil stainon it tells the story of the nightwhen he didn’t come back homeon her birthday. She ate alone,finding comfort and lovein deep fried pakoras.As I examine the oil stainShe tells me I can get it dry-cleanedI decide not to.When I wore it that night, she told meThat I looked beautiful.I told her she too would have.She smiled and her face lit up.I am dry-cleaning the stains,one yard at a time.

To write, she tells meand to write brilliantly,It is absolutely necessarythat you live a little.So I get a knife anddig a grave of all thedeaths that I lived.Hoping to find the signof a life, whimperingunder the rubble. Visible traces of all thelaughs dismembered atthe funeral. Like theending of a songechoing in your dream.A child, a teenager, a woman.One funeral, And a child again.Bodies pile up.Half dead, on the brinkof a breath.I pull them up and breatheinto their mouths.Tugging hard at the hemof a life.A whistle escapes throughtheir nostrils.I step away, and find it goneI lean in and finda song.To write, so I tell herAnd to write brilliantlyIt is absolutely necessaryThat you die a little.

A piece of moonUncut, glitters and waitsThe winds blow over it for eonsAnd smoothen the edgesThe living waters caress it with a million liquid fingersFor another eonPerplexed wild beastsPonder over this gleaming piece of unearthly rockAnd breathe on it their wild scentsA journeyer, the first of his ilk,sees this little piece of rocky ivoryIn his paths across the forestsHe divines the first tool in itHis progeny after him,Forges the fire and the wheelUsing this piece of moon rockYears go byThe sun sets a million timesAnd the moon rises between the branches of treesI find the moon rock, glitteringAnd awaiting for nothing, or for me.A perfection of the labours ofWind, rain, beast, and manAn heirloom of unknown ancestorsFrom a million years agoI kiss it with my lipsAnd it becomes you.

The truth isI was following herSkulking. Full of envy. Thinking“There she isWalking in beauty.Again”How does she do itShe could freeze an oceanOr melt the mountainsBut she chose to growButterflies from her braidMy eyes wander around herFingers as she chops vegetablesWith rhythm and precisionFeet stomping back and forthFrom the counter to the stoveKeeping misery between her teethTeaching me how to peel an orangeLove is difficult in a marriage, she saysYou fight like cats and dogs most nightsAnd forget about it at dawnTruths will unravel themselvesYou’ll slam doors at each other’s facesThe ceiling fan will slowly rotate above youYou’ll stare at it all night long drawingcomparisons between your marriageand the inferno that burnedthe city of Rome for six daysand seven nightsin marriage, you’re both the arsonistand the body covered in keroseneyou’ll feel peace when theirfootsteps fade from an earshotone day, finally, you’ll want to slicethem open with a knifethere’s no returning from there, she says,adding a spoonful of salt to the boiling pot.

I crush mangoes the way I have always seen it done—by hand.Skin against fruit,pulp thick between fingers,a kind of mess that leaves its markeven after the water runs cold.You didn't ask to be taught.You watch—the quiet choreography of women in the kitchen,pressing sweetness from bruised flesh.Love is the little things.A bowl resting on cool tile.Sunlight pooling on a wrist.A thumb sinking into golden meat.You learn to care by doing,again,And again—You carry forwardwhat no one said aloud.And maybe that’s the inheritance:the Motion.There’s something sacredin making something with your hands.Even when they’re tired.Even when they are no longer yoursalone.

what language does to a woman from small townis same as what language does to elitist womenthey say something and I believe itbig-town women, language-under-their-tongue womenyou will see me through the lens of rich womenpretending to be allies, but rolling their r's in savarna womennot all women though, but women, of all castesall kinds who know something about English that I don't capitalized word for "your grammar is wrong" womeni own a job, you must be small womenbig parties, growing doctors, raging scientists,i just can't walk with you womenyou are so minuscule, i don't even see you womenyou fall ill, but die before you blame us womenso when you laughed at me for my bad face, worse english for my ugly depression, acne cheeks, grey hoodie and ill-fitting pants, falling, oiled hair,you point at them women, tell me they are looking at mefor how you dressed womenselena gomze and not selena gomez you from good schools, and i, just a villagerlearning to say selena as saleena, you smirkask me to order tacos, i fumble you laugh again womeni, a sad woman, you pretty in your sadness womeni don't point at your ugly, but you do womenlanguage fermenting on your lips womenstanding tall, shoulder to shoulder with people from your classunlike us womencrouched back, heads bowed downgravity works wonders on our bodies tell me, tell me, your trash secrets, your sullen letterslet me mock it, you petty womanI fight for women but only some womennot you though, you don't match the aesthetics of my clothes womenso what if we are the same blood of fighter womenso what if our women years back learnt the traces of letters on a wooden cardboard so what if witches were burnt because they had a mole, womenso what if you believe us women, us villager women, are so softeven a finger on us can turn into compass for weak womenyou wear good clothes, we just clothes, womenevolution, you saybranching into women of all kindsbut ours is at a distance away,you don't introduce us, your fathers don't take our namesbut "ye ladki" women, you shout at us, because you own a status the i don’t care women, mistaking rudeness for this is who i am womenlanguage in your face women, such growth, such sad growthwhatever you surpass, is just litter women“and i cried...for all of the womenwho stretched their bodies for civilizationsonly to find ruins”of women who couldn't speak much.