you are a poppet of witchcraft when
you are a poppet of
witchcraft when
you do not become mad
after marriage but just before
you light crooked cigarettes
in a garden once yours
sipping stale water
to stay alive after midnight
you are a poppet of witchcraft
when
you are perfectly happy within walls
smelling of years of urine
your hard work of twenty-six years
is spent in a fortnight
the tragic landscape outside
completes itself with you
you are a poppet of
witchcraft when
your mother tongue becomes a faraway
father’s vulgar slur in your mouth
your once able fingers are like
stinking ladyfingers without balls
anyone’s day is made when he
mimics your loose body language
you are a poppet of
witchcraft when
the grass that grows
in your
room is a caress to your feet
your bad luck is a book of morals
for your vicinity’s children
empty bottles roll before you, and
you’ll be sober only on your bier
Weather & Escape
It’s walking loud (like it knows the place) and
has made eye contact with the cathedral
which chimes in an accent foreign to us.
The cooing has gone. The sky is bleeding,
its grey puffy macaroons moving fast.
Striking a matchstick in the wind, we are
like Sisyphus finally rolling his
rock up the hill. Skinny bum against the
half-built wall, JR takes a deep drag on
the bent Bristol nicked from grandpa’s old coat.
He coughs louder than the metal rattling
nearby. My turn: I mimic JR, and
let the smoke copulate with my soft tongue.
Loupin the good boy takes over, only
to push instead of pull. He feels silly
and looks down. Cig in mouth, Pooja does a
Marilyn Monroe flying skirt as the
saucy wind threatens to dishonour her.
She yells—so loud that the world’s most hateful
man (visibly flustered by his poor house
howling like never before) bawls from his
shaking door. “Calling the cops, bloody brats!”
We walk Pooja home along scared flowers,
sit on her old bench, no one keen to go
to their mothers making hot faratas*.
We know her house will not stand this monster.
JR flings the cigarette butt he’s been
keeping. We hear an old man bitterly
blaming the government for the cyclone
stomping the ground as if—it owns the place.
*] Mauritian equivalent of Indian parathas
that legendary
kingdom? It brimmed with
sunflowers that
whispered about lore in
an age of unbridled
change. Do they know
why that blossoming
delight set its own
monarch on fire, and
burned everything down?
That secure den where
we played kouk kasiet*
and
easily fooled the one “it” to reach
the
home base full of yellow pollen is
a grim mosaic of
brick and mortar
now. The epoch ruled
by the honeyed hum
of
buoyant bees has surrendered itself,
at
last, to the squatters’ lewd partying.
The lush marigolds
and holy basil
gave
no finer faith to prayers at home.
The
sunflower seeds roasted in grandma’s
old
kasrol kabose** was the best feast!
Do
these people of mine still remember?
It’s
our innocent, relentless chasing
of
butterflies in that field of solid
glow
that gave our street great footballers and
(now
defunct) champions, Les Tournesols.
I
need to say that it’s our fault—it’s our
fault
if millions of sunflowers survive
in
one forsaken plant now, stifled by
the
odour of urine of jaundiced folks
near
that magnificent Christian Care Home.
But,
if sunflowers have travelled into
space,
perhaps the legendary delight
will
re-institute itself, here itself.
*] hide-and-seek
**] bent pan
behind bars
We, shackled. Thunder
exploding. Lightning
bolting down striped
curtains. We are playing
house with a beast.
The peanut-haired hog lies
in the soaked yard,
deadpan. A real pest
on a good day, mother
tells us. In a
cage of deep-dyed
darkness, our grandmother,
cataract-curtained,
sits in her loose gown—
absent. The rain
erupts and I see the
Java plum tree bend
left and right across
the lines of
straighter barks. Always in the
shadow of these big
trees, its branches are
lashing out at their
barks. I hear the aah
of its loud chains
and find myself swinging
on it. But my
swinging won’t bend it as
this wild werewolf is
doing now. We watch,
we fear, squatting on
the bed as though on
an Indian toilet.
Then, part of its
body snaps, and
flies, like a reckless lance,
hitting the thick
glass my brother and I
have put between us
and the storm. With our
father stuck at work
and the freedom of
the bough close to
wrecking our safe prison,
we suffer a mental
rupture. It’s dead
though, soaked in the
puddle, its soul drowned and
buried in its own blood,
while the maimed tree
(sad as a lock
without key) keeps swinging
its amputation.
Grandmother speaks and
leaves her cold cage.
We pray for everyone
deep into the purple
night as the fat
lightning strikes
keep snaking their way to us.
Amit Parmessur is a poet and tutor from Mauritius. His
writing has appeared in around 160 magazines namely, WINK, The Rye
Whiskey Review, Night Garden Journal, Ann Arbor Review and Ethos
Literary Journal. He loves to pick off past experiences, turn them over in
the light and lie about them.
