POETRY
PYSSUM Literaria Volume 1 : Issue 2 August 2025
HINDOL BHATTACHARJEE
Be a devotee, or fall in love, see the moon
Under the wheels of a lorry, a white, stretched-out sheet
Night rushes by, beside a stunned rice field
Dance of light and shadow, nowhere to go.
You know a station called Melancholy, where people disembark
Homes, tea stalls, restaurants, all closed, even the rickshawallas' cages
No signs of life, yet the smell of Shyol trees near the factory
Chimneys calling out, footprints on the ground, a cannibal?
What's the value of the mark on his palm? Has the siren sounded?
You never think of God, why so many calls today?
Do you want more? More? Call out with open eyes for a few more days
I beg of you, fall in love this time, respected one
Wake up, pure and simple, under the moon.
The full moon doesn't last long.
Hindol Bhattacharjee ( born 1978) is a poet, essayist, novelist, short story writer and a translator. Born and brought up in Kolkata, India, he writes in Bengali. He knows Bengali, English and German. Being one of the major poets of Bengal, he has more than 20 books of poetry, 2 books of essays, 2 books of novels, and 2 books of short stories. As a translator, he has translated more than 500 poems from original German language in association with Sahitya Academy, India, a national academy of letters. For his books, he got prestigious Bangla Academy Award and notable awards in India and Bengal.
Perhaps the wind has broken, and spread across
Some birds' desires, the sky has descended, barely
The sky is a madman, sorrow is a monk
We meet on the path, without shame or hesitation
What dance, peacock? You, a fierce Shimul tree?
The sun's eyes well up with tears, I almost understand
There's an old, earthen road within our minds
Footprints in the mud, a midnight train at the pond
I've arrived here, holding onto the train
Your hair has the dust of kisses, in this wind
Someone sets fire to trees, not the city's sounds
That echo within my chest, a drilling machine's laughter
How many roads are erased, yet still, I hear
I've found it, so I'll burn, devour, and reduce to ashes
This crematorium, unless someday, all the alphabets
Speak up, saying, "You're also fire."
There was no talk, so I'll tell you of a fire
Many roads lie beside destruction, see how many palash flowers
How much love is still cupped in hands, near the refugee camp
A raging fire has touched the danger zone
A train, canceled for many days, still arrives at midnight
I hear the spring declaration on the radio, but
The messenger arrived, saying what's lost is lost
I'll tell you, dear, listen to the bullets instead
Jagannath, tell them, the village is no more, the city's besieged
I recall the name of Charubak Station, but there's no train
Oh, spring, all trains to the north are canceled
You can travel by water; what's left in the southern wind?
The sailboats will return to their mothers, one day
The gun no longer trusts itself, so I can become a boomerang anytime...
Now, I'll garden at home, and let the massacres happen in Syria.
JAYDEEP SARANGI
Time moves slowly, slow as traffic in a busy Kolkata street
Slow arrival of the dawn has the fairest colours
where wearied minds rest from the rush,
daily rust, some ancient scars or to fight a war.
In early dawn streets are free and thoughtful..
Knockers on doors or windows to rouse all from sleep
where seasons arrive and go to touch and join with
barren trees taking away all leaves gently, moist in September rain.
There are days for full sleep, shadows deep
weary pains to open our eyes and reading
all birthday cards and new year gifts
recall every word, love every loss.
Deep whistles loathe thorns in love.
Knock, knock, knock beyond the moon light on doors
reflected to wake calls for drowsy minds
retrieved stories , their unsaid language.
.jpg)
Dubbed as ‘Bard on the Banks of Dulung’ Jaydeep Sarangi is an Indian poet, poetry activist with eleven poetry collections in English latest being the half- confession (2024). and scholar on dalit studies, postcolonial studies and Indian Writings with forty one books anchored in Kolkata/Jhargram,. Widely anthologised and reviewed as a significant contemporary poet Sarangi is on the editorial boards for journals of repute, devoted to marginal studies and poetry criticism.
There are days for full sleep, shadows deep
weary pains to open our eyes and reading
all birthday cards and new year gifts
recall every word, love every loss.
​
Whistles loathe thorns in love.
Knock, knock, knock beyond the moon light on doors
reflected to wake calls for drowsy minds
retrieved stories , their unsaid language.
More than moments, letters mingle souls.
If she has half forgotten all these years for gathering snows and the wind
let me remind her how things started, matured, still growing
knowing each other the most like the Ganges to its myth.
Gaza to Caracas I hear her silence rising
on my sinful eyes without any synonym
hard memories unfold page after page like stories of the stars.
I stand in front of your floral gate of poems
surrounded by green hopes, crow noises
before the wearying banks of the Mahanadi
I leave the twilight of metaphors behind
Passing through a rain of rites
with slow soundless night at Sakchi
The Subarnarekha is never dry
the substance stirs my love forever.
​
Hanging over an ancient city of temples I ask for words
out of hunger or a summer raincloud with bare blurred faces
in relationships looking out for some drops of holy water
Inhabiting signs are white bones where I brand my desirous heart.
JOHN THIEME
Hiding in her mental inglenook
beside the fire’s taunting flames,
she thwarts reductive definition
by the restive prying eyes of passers-by.
​
It’s true some walk on by
without a single word,
avoiding the reef knots of encounter
by pretending she’s invisible.
​
But then there are evangelists
who say she’s ‘on the spectrum’
and strive to convert her to their beliefs.
They show her numbers:
‘Six plus six makes twelve,’ they tell her.
She scrawls the numbers on her tablet.
‘It’s sixty-six. It comes out more my way.’
​
They tell her she should fall in line.
When embers splatter from the fire,
difference imperils those who stand alone.
She smiles at their impossibility,
and softly whispers,
‘You’re different from me.’
John Thieme is a Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia (UK). He previously held Chairs at the University of Hull and London South Bank University and has also taught at the Universities of Guyana and North London and been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Turin, Hong Kong and Lecce. His books include Postcolonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon, Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place, studies of Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan, and The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. He is a former editor of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. His creative writing has been published in Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. His collection Paco’s Atlas and Other Poems was published by Setu Press (Pittsburgh).
Eliza is the third client to receive a transplant
from Victor’s change-a-brainorama.
He says the first two were just ‘works in progress,
Partial successes on the road to Xanadu’.
The media called them ‘Frankenflops’.
One is happy in his cage at Mysore Zoo;
the other’s whereabouts are now unknown,
but in a farewell post before the fall
that followed his assertion of great pride,
he boasted that he led a mighty nation.
This Dr Jekyll, rebrained as Mr Hyde.
​
Victor is more hopeful for Eliza,
his model for a hate-free future planet.
Her brain, he says, has subtler, gentler neurons,
some borrowed from the healing bark of trees,
others from the soothing licks of dogs.
But most of all, he says, its tender contours
have been adapted from a loving human source,
the special hugs of those with special needs.
MALASHRI LAL
Khushi was brought to us
for school admission;
Tight pigtails, snotty nose in a pale face,
tattered frock on a skinny frame.
‘Four, did you say, but she looks younger’, I said.
The bright little eyes glanced here and there
hoping to escape my scrutiny
a caged rabbit seeking an escape hole.
‘She has no father, the mother is bedridden. No one looked after Khushi.
Neighbors cast food to the girl sometimes;
she roams the streets, like a stray cat, licking up what she can find,
the mother is beyond comprehension,’ said the escort.
​
I signed the admission papers
Writing my name as
The Guardian.
To Keki Daruwalla
​
In your story of the lost son
the father spied him
disheveled but happy on
an island of birds,
Human language
gladly forgotten.
​
You inhabit this new dictionary
of words and images--
vividly imagined, seldom uttered.
It is pure distillation,
creating an ether
of exquisite clouds
floating through gestures
of eyes, palms, fingers.
​
An eloquent poem in its own genre.
Professor Malashri Lal is an academic, writer, editor and anthologist, well known for her work on women, literature and culture. A popular speaker and book reviewer, Malashri Lal is kept busy with international panels and literature festivals, bringing to them a deep perception of women in India. As a creative writer, Malashri Lal’s poems, stories and translations have been published in Indian Literature, Confluence, The Beacon, online portals and anthologies in the USA and in India.Betrayed by Hope: A Paly on the life of MichaelMadududanDutt, co-authored with NamitaGokhale, won the Kalinga Fiction Book of the Year Award 2020-21, and its script on StorytelAudiobooks has the famous actors Victor Banerjee and Sushmita Sen playing the parts of Madhusudan and the Sutradhar. Lal has served as a member of international and national book award juries such as the Commonwealth Writers Prize, London, the DSC South Asia Literary Prize, London and India, The Hindu Literary Prize, Crossword Book Award, The Sushila Devi Book Award for Women, among others.
The days of lunchboxes
and homework
are long past.
​
Yet I hold on to that tiffin dabba which carried cake and sandwiches,
The school uniform is still on a hanger stained with colours of Holi.
We’ve been empty nesters for long
But can a nest ever reconfigure
it’s twigs of twined intimacy?
I still hear the patter of the steps, the thump of the school bag,
the demand for alu paratha and kababs
​
The shadows of many young lads rush through these empty rooms
Some notice that I’m sitting immobilized on crutches.
MALLIKA BHAUMIK
A busy Kolkata mall
held an awareness programme by a mental health organisation.
The theme was 'Mad stories'
Unheard Stories of insignificant lives were pasted on the sprawling Exhibit area
Voices that have been mocked at,
deprived,
incarcerated,
alienated,
labelled
found a way into the mainstream of life
under the jazzy lights of a commercial hub
A different world opened up.
​
Their one liners,
Hand me down clothes, gummy smiles,
flared nostrils at the sight of rice and fish curry,
unaddressed letters to folks back home,
were reimagined and showcased to the
well heeled gentry.
​
A popular shopping destination
stopped in its track, paused for a while
to learn and know
about heartbeats that keep searching for love and acceptance,
about heartbeats that wait for a 'kintsugi' touch.
​
This poem was written after attending a unique awareness program by Anjali, a Mental Health Rights Organisation, based in Kolkata, on 3rd April, 2025.
​
Kintsugi ~ a Japanese technique to repair broken artefacts with lacquer of gold dust.
Mallika Bhaumik was a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry in the year 2019. Her poetry, short stories, essays, articles, travelogue, interview have been published in various e mags and journals like The Punch Magazine, Madras Courier, Outlookindia, Dhaka Tribune, Shot Glass Journal, Cafe Dissensus, Guftugu Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, Kitaab, The Alipore Post, Voice and Verse (edited by Tammy Ho of Asian Cha)to name a few. She is the author of three poetry books. Her latest book 'When time is a magic jar' has been published by Red River Press in February, 2025. She lives and writes from Kolkata, India.
As we wait for the rains, I realise that there is a growing unfamiliarity with
patience, that's woven into the word.
Time, unhurried and languid; is now a faraway dot sailing near the horizon,
about to get lost from our sight.
Our slowly savoured childhood is only a part of an unwritten memoir.
After losing our love and naivety to the pace of the city, we look like fallow
landscapes,
our hectic schedule, broken trust, hasty sex have made us an impoverished lot,
we have nothing to give or receive,
we only create Instagrammable moments.
In another era, our grandmothers had oiled and combed their long hair into neat
buns,
waited for their pickled love to be sunned in the courtyard,
for letters to arrive from their maternal home
or husbands working in another land,
had gone through long hours of labour before each childbirth.
Their old silks, hard bound books, filigreed jewellery box wear the patina of a
wholesome living.
Looking back, I have understood that life was a seductress and they had been
passionate lovers,
waiting with scented bodies,
humming lullabies at night.
MEENAKSHI MOHAN
If they can’t learn how we teach, we teach how they learn.
Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas
atrocious
monstrous
vicious
wicked
horrible
shocking
autistic
they spat, they hissed,
labels flung at six-year-old Sheila,
a child born and abandoned at birth by a teenage mother,
she lived with an alcoholic father
in a one-room shack in the migrant camp.
She abducted a neighborhood child, tied and burnt,
she poked the fish's eyes with a pointed edge,
people feared this tiny little girl with matted hair,
hostile eyes and lousy smell.
No teacher wanted this child in their special classrooms,
her world was a deep, dark well with a silent storm --
no tears ever fell, no smiles ever escaped her lips,
her eyes held no light, and her heart was emotionless.
Then, like a spark, Torey came and pierced
the thorny exterior of this child and dived deeper into understanding her--
Sheila, whom the world had declared and written off as hopeless
but Torey’s patience and love worked like tender rain
beginning to soften the stubborn resistance.
And a bud started to open, then a crack –
tears flowed down the child’s cheek,
and a smile touched her trembling lips
the ghosts of darkness withered –
the well of silence was broken,
revealing the bright mind beneath --
the shell was broken
to reveal a pearl shining in its full glory.
@meenakshimohan April 15, 2025
​
Note: A book, One Child, inspired this poem.
“Torey fought to reach Sheila, to bring the abused child back from her secret nightmare, because, beneath the autistic rage, Torey saw in Sheila the spark of genius.” – One Child.
Dr. Meenakshi Mohan (USA) is an internationally published writer, educator, art critic, children’s writer, painter, and poet. She is on the editorial Committee for Inquiry in Education, a peer-reviewed journal published by National Louis University, Chicago, Illinois. Meenakshi received Setu and Panorama International Awards for Excellence in Literature.
.jpg)
Three brilliant African American women pivotal to Nasa’s space mission
caught in the orbits of male-centric norms –
a world of racial and gender discrimination where they were
constantly humiliated, downgraded, and ridiculed.
They walked half a mile to use the designated bathroom for colored people,
had segregated workspace separate from their white counterparts,
faced limitations to the resources and opportunities available to whites,
expected to perform the work without professional respect,
excluded from important meetings, promotional growth --
yet they rose beyond these earthly divides and limitations.
They faced challenges like warriors,
such was their perseverance that even the heavens appeared to yield,
their minds, a boundless galaxy, teemed with the choreography of
equations and the powerful arc of trajectories,
they became the vital thread of Nasa’s space mission and became
the key and intricate architects of their scientific imperatives.
Like a silent storm, they rose above prejudices
they weaved a legacy of their indispensable contributions,
their power of intellect shattered the long mold of biases
turning the wheels of innovations to buoyant forces.
They left clear and strong footprints that eternally stayed etched
in the science field.
@meenakshimohan April 15, 2025
Note: The book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly inspired this poem.
Theodore Melfi directed the movie based on this book.
NISHI PULUGURTHA
she looks at the green
shape lying
in front
​
a shape that moves
she tries to catch it
and it moves away
a little
​
she stops and waits
and looks again
that green shape stops
​
it moves a bit
she looks away
and sees the blue and white
above
​
and then looks down
at the green shape
that is now closer
​
And she puts her hand out
And picks it up
And she smiles
​
Happiness . . .
At 21 …
the colours and sounds
and some music
they look here and there
unsure
​
one little one moves
his hand in dance
and the others follow
as they keep to the beat
​
the anxious looks now
are happy
as they dance and have fun
​
and we smile to see
the joy on the faces
that rejoice
​
a dance that catches on
a few tears
and some more smiles
from the watchful eyes.
.jpg)
Nishi Pulugurtha is academic, author, poet, editor, critic and translator. She writes short stories, poetry, on travel and non-fiction and has published works in them apart from several academic writings including the edited volume, Literary Representations of Pandemics, Epidemics and Pestilence (Routledge, 2023). Her recent work is a co-edited translation work - Bandaged Moments (Niyogi Books, 2025). A book on food and a fourth volume of poems are forthcoming. She was Writer in Residence 2023 at Samyukta Research Foundation, Thiruvananthapuram, is Secretary, Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library (IPPL), Kolkata and is Chief Editor of Antonym Magazine for 2025.
PRAKASH JOSHI
1.
​
Rivers approaching in a placid flow, languid,
enveloped in the winter mist of late night;
holy already and yet becoming
holier at the point of confluence:
two of them visible, dimly,
in the dazzle of electric floodlights;
and the third existing
in a form and dimension unknown to humans
or in the lore people carry in their hearts.
The lure of the confluence,
of lore, of custom, of faith, and of belief
draws them all, the believing and the half believing,
and the unbelieving yet wanting
to imbibe the rare spectacle:
a special configuration of stars
overlooking and blessing
the Prayag Mahakumbh recurring,
some say, after one hundred and forty four years.
All of them -- the believing, the half-believing,
and the unbelieving -- wanting a dip or two, or more,
in the waters of the confluence, becoming nectar
touched by the light of the stars in that rare configuration.
They look transformed.
The waters of the confluence --
of the holy Ganga, of the pious Yamuna,
and of the sacred Saraswati --
have soaked their souls, bigly or ever so slightly.
​
2.
​
I see them on the Sangam sand,
barefeet, hand in hand.
Walking side by side,
their shoulders brushing,
their legs moving in tandem,
in un-premeditated measured rhythm,
the two are impervious
to all around.
Untouched by the here-and-now,
they’ve walked, together, hand in hand,
over sands of time,
birth after birth after birth,
through yugas and yonis -- the forms of being.
The footprints they leave behind
look conjoined
like Yin and Yang.
At the brink of the confluence - the Sangam,
they pause, looking into each other’s eyes;
A ripple of a wave reaches out
to touch their feet,
as if to invite them.
They move in, holding hands, facing each other,
take their dips and stand in water
reaching up to their waist, for long.
Their hands separate
only for as long as they say their prayers.
And then they turn around, pause,
and move out to the bank.
As they walk back, hand in hand,
marking their footprints on the Sangam sand,
the setting sun behind their heads
shines like a halo.
​
3.
The sun is past the meridian,
down by many degrees,
slowly maturing into a deep orange
of the evening.
The waters of the Sangam
shimmer under the invisible vapours
prismatically refracting the sunrays
into multitudes of mutating shades.
The mist that hangs in the western horizon
is thickening, swelling in strength,
gaining tint and colour, brightening,
preparing, as if, to receive
the lone pilgrim who has
travelled the diurnal distance
from the eastern edge of the sky-dome
to his destination behind the mist.
Pilgrims -- throngs and throngs of them,
move in a single direction, entranced,
their eyes searching
for the holy bank of the holy confluence;
their hearts and minds obeying a call.
Their clothes, of many colours,
mingling into a unifying mass,
become a moving and living mosaic.
​
They take their bathing dips
single or in pairs or in groups,
silent or whooping joyful or in quiet smiles,
or a mumbled prayer moving their lips.
Something changes in their eyes,
something alters in their looks:
with a serenity playing in their faces,
a calm has touched their beings.
Professor (Dr.) Prakash Joshi is Professor of English at the Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj 211002, Uttar Pradesh, India.
POOJA SHARMA
We are pictures on a wall
Some of us all gilded or framed
Others may be a little jagged
around the edges, but
when the time comes
we all fall down.
Does the wall miss us then?
Do we miss being on the wall
then, or are we just relieved
to be hanging no more
by the hook?
Is the wall relieved
to be rid of the grumpy
moldy, fady pictures?
Will a new picture
take our place soon?
Many a cult of pics say -
after the final fall comes
a slide, straight to heaven.
We don't really know much,
just that we are pictures
on a wall, waiting to
tumble down.
Pooja Sharma teaches English Literature at University of Delhi, New Delhi. Her poems have been published in anthologies and literary magazines like The Kali Project, YAWP - The Little Magazine, and Insulatus. Collection of her poems titled ‘Fireflies’ was published in 2023. She has also co-authored a historical fiction titled ‘Of Things Lost and Never Found’.
It’s good - this
nothing between us.
Like a bridge left midway
river gone -
land transformed -
and the halfway bridge
going from nowhere to nowhere.
It’s good, this thing
was there, but is not.
Like the crack before it rains -
clouds, winds
an expectant earth
and in a flash stranded
forever, that thing between us.
A good thing it is
unworded, unborn.
Like a story - thought
not told; of Two
amid a potpourri of people
making up words to catch
this thing between us.
S.A. HAMID
Revulsion
camouflaged under pitiful glances
like the ones showered
on poverty stricken people
by the stinking rich
are etched on their memory
enhancing their disability.
A one-eyed person,
encountered on the way
to a mission important
foredooms failure.
Who will marry this lame girl?
What practical use will she be?
Such taunts
from her very own people
make her shrink into a corner
and waste herself away
in household chores.
What about a ‘normal’ wayward child,
a rapist, a murderer, a pedophile,
a drunkard, a spouse beater,
a cruel parent, a psychopath?
Don’t these look normal, but hide
incurable incongruities?
Aren’t they the real burden
on parents, family, society?
Standing on our ‘normal’ pedestal
like a priest on a pulpit
we look down upon the differently-abled
as sinners beyond redemption.
Pity, a tight slap that hits them
where it hurts most.
Empathy, rare
Love, almost never.
S. A. Hamid, retired Professor of English, poet and translator, has published five books of poetry, the latest being The Alchemy of Ageing (New Delhi: Authorspress, 2021). His poems have also appeared in various journals and anthologies.
URNA BOSE
The wind plays peek-a-boo, niftily hiding behind
my mother’s delicate, white, lacy, sheer curtains.
I see it crouched, a gamester, but pretend not to.
It teases and tempts me, the parakeet-green
leaves of the deodar tree - its harp, flute, banjo.
It knows music is my warm, moist poultice.
When I don’t give away my hideout, it whistles
at me: our secret code language. I wait patiently
for the wind to drift in, playful eyes searching for
me, seeking me out from damp, dark burrows.
The wind has been patient with me, too. At
first, it would just blow the pesky wasps away.
Then slowly it would coo at me - a sweet, soft,
white dove. And if I didn’t respond immediately,
it didn’t get pissed off, unlike the boys I call “friends”
in the apartment. The wind never makes fun of my
stammer, never mimics the ragged pauses when
every word is a crumbling castle in the sand.
It waits around on its quiet haunches, upon sturdy
big brother toes, till I explain what I mean. Unlike
my boisterous cousin, whose temper is a slippery
sheet of ice, splintering, shattering, drowning me
in an avalanche of dark drum-roll and exasperated
complaints, made to my ashen-faced mother.
The wind never makes me the butt of all jokes,
when I turn into a turtle. It knows my shell is my
own calm, my cave, my sanctuary. My anointed,
hardened battle-shield, when the so-called
normal spirals into a head-banging, filling up
my nostrils with a pungent, jarring “too-much”.
The wind knows there are more ways to express
my intravenous upheavals, the fluttering of my
powdery, butterfly heart. That conversation is
hard, small talk or lectures, harder. But show me
doodles spangled with psychedelic colours and
neon moonbeams, and you have a fan for life.
The wind understands, an acronym: ASD, can
punch a thousand jagged holes in my soul.
The wind knows, I’m larger than the sum of
all my deficits, disorders, and diagnoses. But
guess, why I love the wind so much? Then
let me tell you a secret I keep under my pillow.
It reminds me about the “spectrum” of acceptance,
in the natural world, out there. Where a giraffe’s
slender, long neck isn’t poked fun at, an elephant
isn’t asked why it can’t fly, nor is a beetle compared
to a hummingbird, and a sunflower isn’t made to
cringe, because it wasn’t born a plumed peacock.
The wind taps on my 8-year-old, droopy shoulders,
raps on my bagful of fragile, touch-me-not dreams,
hums me a tranquillizing lullaby and clicks its tongue
in squeaky delight, when I show it my jar of fireflies
and mossy, four-leaf clovers. Then, it drums loving
fingers on my crimson, orange marigold senses.
This time, softer than every other time, gentler than
the first drop of rain on the tongue, sweeter than any
mango I have ever suckled upon, whispering to me –
“You are Special”. But not in the mangled, gnarled,
twisted way, you use that word again, and again,
and again. For me. On me. At me. Against me.
(Written from the point of view of an 8-year-old boy)
Copyright © Urna Bose
ASD – Autism Spectrum Disorder
Urna Bose is an award-winning advertising professional, writer, poet, editor, and reviewer. For six consecutive years, her poetry has gone viral globally. She won ‘The Enchanting Editor Award, 2019’, from the Telangana Poetry Forum, and the ‘Women Empowered - Scintillating Creative Impactful – Feminine Power Inspiration Award, 2020’. Then came the prestigious ‘Nissim International Prize for Poetry, 2021’, followed by the ‘Panorama International Literature Award, 2024’. As the Deputy Editor for ‘Different Truths’, she also devotes her time to the ‘Poet 2 Poet’ column – an intensive labour of love that she is deeply invested in.
The “A”s and “C”s were flying saucers taking off
from the bone-dry whiteness of the page colliding
in mid-air with my father’s pursed-lip expectation of
an “A Grader” – a son’s annual mark sheet is the firm
muscle of a father’s puffed-up “He’s MY son” chest.
It was in third grade that I first learnt how to spell
F-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n, a spinning scrambled egg tumble
into a palindrome of barbed stares, slantwise down.
“It’s not L-o-o-f, but F-o-o-l”, I was shouted at. I tried
to memorize that F-o-o-l – that is me, and I am that.
A dance of vowels, the pencil clenched tight in my
fist, wrestled to make meaning out of them, gagged
in peer pressure’s tempest, smashing into blizzards of
scorn-whipped shame. Is this the way of hurricanes?
Bumbling into twisted forms of backward “g”s and “q”s.
I am still learning how to spell D-y-s-l-e-x-i-a. The word
that dictates the vampires of normality to sink their fangs
in my flesh. Yet my ridicule-hardened bones know better
when you laugh at me. You, too, can’t wrap your tidy,
neat head around that word, spelled as E-m-p-a-t-h-y.
Copyright © Urna Bose
“S” for Snigger
Floating in the sea of brine, “S” is a stiff
zygote, conceived on my sullen tongue,
a stillbirth swaddled in the silence of a
sterile, vinegar-sprinkled condescension.
“T” for Trying
The wait - furtive, the drumming of the
fingers - awkward, the rest of the syllables
flattened to an embarrassed pulp. Therein
hangs effort, in upside-down suspension.
“A” for Awkward
Stir-fried-sautéed unsolicited advice is
heartily ladled out on my mother’s plate
at a “well-meaning” neighbour’s house. She
gulps it down, with a sip of social niceties.
“M” for Maelstrom
Like bile, shape-shifting into the mould of a
crooked receptacle, my mouth turns into a
shrunken appendage, the drowsy battlement
of the stench of pity invites the buzzing of flies.
“M” for Malady
The tongue fumbles in the darkness of the
mouth-cave, grows a raspy tail amid the confines
of a burrow, the “S” won’t peek from. The throat,
a dry diphthong, dripping with “Why me?”
​
“E” for Echo
I cajole my lips to push, push, push. After the
prolonged “Ssss”, the rest of the word rolls as
a boulder does for doomed Sisyphus. Reversing
its trail through the teeth, gullet, stomach.
“R” for Reminder (A gentle one at that)
My eyes, an invocation to the God of patience.
Please, please. It was right there at the tip of my
tongue, till you thought you were helping me
by completing my sentence for me. Yet again.
AMRITA SHARMA
There have been long periods of silence that
irrationally alternate you and me with
irresistibly lucrative ideas to hold on.
​
There have been crafted ways in which social conditionings mate
with culture, curriculum and comments at a glance
that all synchronize to form the melodies we mumble.
​
There have been oral histories on mindset crafts
rigidly interlocked with a ‘no’ and a ‘why’
and a quicker rejection to an unfulfilled norm.
​
Alas, there have been potions to change mindsets
Magical enough to give a momentary pause, and convince you
to think one more time, in one more way.
Amrita Sharma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, India. She has a Ph.D degree in English from the University of Lucknow and has been a Fulbright Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame, USA. Her works have previously been published in several national and international journals. Her first collection of poems is titled The Skies: Poems and she has been published as a part of ‘The Hawakal Young Poets Series 2022.’
Email: sharma.amrita92@gmail.com
