I found your
shawl beneath the harsingar tree.
Made me think
of you in winter, talking
of the seasons
as if they were handcrafted
for you by an
old friend:
“Spring
is shorter than my thumb.
I can hold it
up to the sky to hide
a cloud, a bird,
a fist of figs —
and it’s
summer already.”
I wonder where
the harsingar went with its head
of white flowers.
It had grown out of a lamp-post
and our imagination,
but now
only the lawn
remains, sprawling
out of tin cans,
pavement crevices,
even in my roadside
shack.
Sometimes I’m
lucky and coins dance
into my bowl
— dahlias in the wind.
š
My husband
Monitor light
drums against his leather
face. He glows
as a god.
I watch from
the garden. It is the day
for practising
kathak. My hands move
like the blooming
petals of a lotus.
He is blind with
music
from the lute-shaped
speaker.
He has a new
devotee.
In the shade
of the mango tree, roots
claw me in an
embrace tight as death.
The garden balls
up into a leech.
It is all his
now: the house,
where even spider
webs glint the colour of wire.
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Aditi Machado’s
poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Eclectica, New Quest,
A cappella Zoo and Soundzine. She won the TFA award for Creative Writing
2009, which is given to Indian writers under the age of 30, and also edits for Mimesis.
She lives in Bangalore, India and blogs at Blotting paper.
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