Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1. May 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
--- Uma Sankar
Noon arrives in the glint of knife
against coconut shell,
the callused hands of the vegetable woman
sorting brinjals, their purple skins bruised like secrets.
Chilies dry on the ledge,
red as the tongue of a forgotten god.
The tea-seller’s kettle, blackened and battered,
spits steam that curls into the air-
a ritual smoke,
blessing the cracked lips of men who speak in half-truths,
and women who barter for coriander,
green scent clinging to their wrists
like a promise not quite kept.
Here, the city is human-inhuman-nonhuman-posthuman,
all woven into the midday heat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bio:
UmaSankar Damaraju
is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Anurag University,
Hyderabad. With two decades of experience in academia, his scholarly interests
include Cultural Studies, Eco-Critical Theory, Digital, Medical, Environmental
and Blue Humanities, Game Theory in Literary Criticism, Posthumanism, Cyber
Feminism, Gender and Film Studies and Speculative Fiction.
****************