Acquired Taste
A Hen
the day she’d learned how the wind delightfully tickles her belly as she soars,
her wings were ripped off.
when her legs offered solace, they were nailed down,
with her hands left, she held her brother
for her despair had broken his heart,
which rendered his wings weak, and his feet futile.
she used her hands to soothe him
and a sapling of hope grows from them,
the sky makes way and the moon entices him
his wings lift and his feet tingle
he learns once again to fly.
from the only hands that she had left,
she had been left.
Snow
a snow-draught country’s admiration for snow is its incarnations,
such as a succession of dust that tumbles within a beam of light,
and the bed of cotton pods ripened at the seams,
or the drizzle of rain caught to hair that turns silver,
when it falls in a flitter like a pale bug of the forest
A Drunken Dance
she held me upright on the grass,
at our feet lay remains of white flowers, raat ki raani
we swayed, or danced and i told her she reminded me of the moon.
Father
caress, his wrinkled finger along the lobe of her ear,
earrings dangling, lingering silver.
silvered moon, crescent and virtually extinct,
extinction of her perfume as they dance,
dancing, my mother in the lead.
leading father, his fingers round the fabric, feel its texture at her waist
wasted. wasted at the thought of her,
her hair which parted, bridge a space on her furrowed forehead,
forehead to kiss.
kiss her again,
against a pretence of obligation.
obliged to love her and be,
be her lover, though his love for her displaced.