Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 2, Number 2. November 2019. ISSN: 2581-7094
The Man Who Was Denied
a Pivotal Wish
And
the bird said:
“I
am saddled with debt, saddled with debt”
Whose
debt, he asked, whose debt?
“I’m
burdened with debt,” the bird said, “burdened with debt”
Shoot,
he
said. Stop sounding like a broken record
Unburden
yourself, he added. Unburden yourself
“On
whom?’ she asked. “On whom?”
On
me,
he laughed. On me!
“You
are not worth the burden,” she said
“You
aren’t worth the burden,” she said
It
was the second time in a month that he was told
He
wasn’t worth assuming a communal debt.
Then
last week, the avengers cut him loose, let him live
Why,
he cried, why?
“You
aren’t worth it,” they said. “You aren’t worth it.”
The
year before his clan had killed one of their men
“You
are too ugly to merit our kin’s blood,” they said
“You
are too ugly to merit our kin’s blood.”
Am
I not a man? he asked. Ain’t I a man? he hollered.
“Not
all men are cut from the same cloth,” they said
“Not
all men are cut from the same cloth,” they said
The
demand of his right to be a man
The
demand of his right to manhood
Was
beyond what he could accept. He
Begged
the avengers to kill him. He
Entreated
the avengers not to spare his life, for
Who
would marry his offspring, if this shame
Was
left to stand? Left to stand?
He
implored that he be killed. Unperturbed by his
Tantrums,
the avengers tied him to a
Tree,
for hyenas to fulfill his wishes.
When
his wife was told of his agonizing death, she
Lamented
profusely: the feasting hyenas were
From
another hamlet.
Juggling Pronouns
I
saw myself lost in the whirl of juggling pronouns
I
against you, she against him
We
against them. A moribund game jousting
In
the tradition of a zero-sum game,
Repeating
Kipling’s raucous romping beyond the Rubicon
Pass
that straddled treacherous mountain tombs
The
dance of the pronouns leapfrogs to a
tango
of awkward embraces flirting
With
stale ordinances stolen from a
Brown
page shorn off a bruised promise
The
pronouns that long ago fled the page
Now
coalesce, forming circles
Of
eerie magnitude, sending feelers deep into
Labyrinths
of solitude, where monkey grammarians
Massage
the scruffy tendons of a strain forgotten
Forgotten
through years of stumble and tumble and dye
Years
of tumble stumble and dye
Sibylline
semantics rhapsodizing about
Hopscotch
grids mapped onto moving clouds
Moving
clouds, moving clouds!
Una
vez más, de otra manera
Otherwise—I and Thou