Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 9, Number 1. May 2026. ISSN: 2581-7094
Overspraying
--- Jharna Choudhury
The rice-field morning meet has
an avian logogram;
egrets for flood days pecking displaced fishes,
koels with a throat calender mapping Bohaag,
mynahs stitching gossip of Tejimola’s pickles,
pipits and bee-eaters rehearsing the sunbeam grammar
with the vigilant drongos;
and the shrikes ready for surgical violence on
rodents,
composing a winged symphony.
Something entered the grains, they heard, from
children of distant homes.
Now eyes glued to the sky, as if tied to wires,
caught in a loop of pauses, missing the vent of
oxygen,
mistaking green for the dark,
petitionless, launching to find water, only water.
Something entered the fields, they heard, from
grandmothers of distant homes.
Full of amber liquid, synthesised to kill
their sweet sweet harmony;
sometimes falling from the clouds like seeds
dispersed,
otherwise, a silent relay of notorious toxins
called “folkbird paralysis”.
(Nobody calls the paramedics.
Birds used only in case studies.)
Aai’s Menu
--- Jharna Choudhury
The kitchen garden, in its human disarray, gives
green.
Aai has planted every unkempt plant
as a prescription,
and tells us,
the tongue should remember the bitter taste,
the mind should remember the bitter experiences.
She simmers in a pot, pennywort soup to kill a cold,
fish in skunk vine and curry leaves,
mint and garlic crushed with a stone,
white goosefoot tossed in mustard oil.
She cooks in a clinic where pills are leaves.
She is an archivist of the earth,
who listens to the arrival of the seasons,
and turns to the grandmothers of Assam
for remedies cradled in sunlight and water.
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Bio:
Jharna Choudhury
(she/her), author of the Assamese poetry collection Kaya (2023) and the poetry
chapbook The Mouth of a Needle (2025), is a hand embroidery artist from Assam,
India, and goes by the name “embroidery stories.” Her creative writings appear
in Usawa, Ethelzine, Parcham, Thumbprint Northeast, Pine Cone Review, SETU, The
Little Journal of Northeast India, Muse India, WILDsound, Spillwords, and nine
anthologies (Indie Blu[e] Publishing, Authorspress, and more). She is also an
Assistant Professor in English Literature at Dimoria College (Autonomous),
Khetri, Assam, India.
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