“A Detail in the Fire Escape” by Linda Ashok
That man is a scribe
with a rim of intelligence
and spaceships
bookmark his cheeks
He loves banana flowers
loves rain and carpentry
two blocks of conversation
a sentence, and just a few words
his clean desk policy
Hemorrhagic;
sometimes he slits open
his body from his throat
to testicles and sets a paper boat
on a bad tide
Sits back and basks
in its rendezvous…
I know very little of him
Very little. I know him
as much I know a crow’s call
or a sperm, or you
who sit before
listening to this
entropy. That man
loves my sandal gap, had asked
for my nails by post
Translations:
अल्प विस्तार फायर एसकेप में in Hindi by Saima Afreen
অগ্নিতারণ পথের অনুপুঙ্খ in Bengali by Aryanil Mukherjee
തീക്കോവണിയില് കോറിയിട്ടത് in Malayalam by Ravi Shanker
Linda Ashok is a poet from Kolkata, living in Hyderabad, India. She was one of the 25 feature poets selected by the Prakriti Foundation for the Hindu Lit for Life, 2014. She was also selected for the 2015 Napa Valley Writer’s Workshop with Arthur Sze. Linda’s poetry appeared in various online journals, the most recent being the Big Bridge Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry. Her review/s can be found on the ‘The Rumpus’. Won the Wordweavers 2015 Dabble contest. Linda tweets at @thebluelimit. More: rlpoetry.org
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