by Rini Barman
This anonymous lady is a masquerade of sorts,
You and I excavate her every day
This anonymous lady
Swims in the layers
You and I undress every night;
She waits in the green-lit streets,
Only shortsighted strangers lie down there
She trembles at man-made stories,
Some have footpaths as the storytellers,
Where,
A fairy would thrust drops of elixir,
Impassive her claims remain,
“Serve the emperor with
The malevolence of your dreams…”
Overcast at the longitude of time
Many would leave false footprints
And boulevards would weep
At the orchids her ugly hands held;
From the gutter, a maiden star
Would whisper, “The echoes must end here,
For, if trespassed, can breach your wings,
Here take this greasy fabric
It will soak your brutally honest stains
You will be a lady with a name.”
(What a bait that was!)
She fondles with leisure
The barricades of her two pockets,
All at the mercy of memory
The red womb is her testimony,
It scratches the un-trodden fallopian streets,
She has lived and re-lived there.
The infernal thunder shatters the light
With which,
You and I undress
This anonymous lady
Every night…
She sings the ballad of her best friend,
“Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
This is the way we brush our teeth,
Early in a frosty morning.”
Crawling with a wicked visage
He spits on a painful lump of flesh
The greatest whore of them all;
A stray bitch lying in the midst of day garbage
Cuddles her envious lap,
“Do you see the cadence of moon,
Just beside the litter of flecked planets ..?”
She would blot
The fallen skies,
As one blue conundrum over the other,
Before the rain would flow back
Into the gutters again,
They would both learn,
To sketch out semicircles
Made out of speckled rainbows
In the dark…
Rini Barman is pursuing her M.A in English Literature at the Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. She has published articles and poetry in journals like Muse India, The Four Quarters Magazine, Enajori.com, The Eclectic and in local dailies from the North-East like The Assam Tribune, The Sentinel and The Seven Sister’s Post.
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