The twenty six alphabets
are voiceless vowels
and the table of two
a chart of codes
most like the mantras
she will be coerced to chant,
her dreams were dandified daisies
she had plucked
with the departing dawn
when her doll was
given away in marriage,
a red riding hood
with frills of fallow.
When waken at four
she couldn't read
through the riddle
that this day
would consummate her
in the holy fire
and she will be confined
in the seven cycles
of mutiny and not matrimony
she never went to school
after that day,
and started wearing a noose spun
of black beads
vermilion was the scarlet sorrow
confined in a chest of confessions,
since then her head stays covered
and tongue prisoned behind
her milk teeth, wisdom in waiting
the first night was a red sea
that would ebb till the time
she becomes a bride again
on the ashes
of her resting pyre.
I saw him
while he never looked,
like a prisoner on parole
I thought I found it
love as they call,
I wrote and he lived
sometimes a January moon
many times as March's murmur
and then an artic autumn,
I wrote till he breathed
and bled, trickling tears
from my crown of thorns.
I've wailed and weeded
sighed to shame
kneeling to a lamenting limerick
the notes were numbered
and so were the days,
till destiny pulled
another sarcasm's sally.
The suspect is slammed shut
in that can of choke,
no symphony she recalls
sugar she doesn't savour,
from where he went
there is a hole
bile of blood,
and remains of a rhyme
wronged to rot.
My grandfather’s house
bears witness to the river’s anklets
drunk by its song
she entices paddy fields and dusty dribble
an enchantress who doesn’t age and never stoops
unallured by the coughing of an old red bus
unemployment is costly
for every lump in the throat chokes and digs
a grave for another old woman,
oil soaks a school girl’s hair
her red ribbons braided so tight
that she pays salutation
to everyone she meets on the road.
The man hunched on the milestone
is her uncle who measures
the length of her skirt
a few meters away the church bells ring
and earthen lamps light a prayer for a son
daughters don’t get burial in this land
where they a liability.
As I pass by in a car,
I hope to never come back to this land
where the soil is still orange
leeched by parasites so petrified.
A wooden casing
with a wrecked window
wails in front of the house
Two one one,
is the number
in intricate inscription
with black paint
the sun may have shone on its forehead
last summer when the daughter's
stipend application
gave birth to an answer,
its womb weaned in willow
since then, waits for
her blue inked letter
or a congratulatory message
to an invitation accepted,
she ached for alienation
just like the old mail box
whose name no one remembers
since the e-mail fluttered to fame.
Your streets enamelled ebon
go red and green
when life begins,
a merry-go-round
of moored matins graying
in the gloating gloam,
they vandalised your belly
raising brick buildings
on your brown skin,
stealing your vermilion to paint
the lips of a keep,
fireballs were fanned
in your alleys
when frost blinded the
eyes of a masquerade
letters have since
then been smothered
in signatures and
stuffed into sacks.
Today after ten years
my skirt has grown longer
when my bruises
healed with the hooch of heresy
I've seen your fight with time
and thank myself for
having read from your books.
Rinzu Rajan writes in an attempt to sear away from the boundaries of
cliche. Research in the field of biology and blogging occupy the rest
of her time and devotion. Despite the lack of formal training, Rinzu
has written poetry in over 30 forms and is experimenting with fiction nowadays. She blogs at www.rinzurajan.blogspot.in.
ISSUE:
W I N T E R
2012
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