Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 9, Number 1. May 2026. ISSN: 2581-7094
Resonance
--- Madhu Raghavendra
—for Aleksandra Šuklar,
multi-percussionist and marimba artist
The sky drums the earth
frees this life of planetary anomalies.
Molecules of mallets gently crash
like waves against coastal headlands,
the marimba misses flowing, chanting
through endless fields of ancestry,
the wrists have a body of their own
that surrender to the skin of time,
cymbals hover like heliotropic hearts
because music rises before the Sun.
Whose spirit in the djembe would you choose?
The spirit of the tree that makes the body
or the spirit of the animal that gives the hide
or the creator of the drum.
I'll choose the spirit of the player who stirs
you
without the knowledge of your tongue.
Assures you; what is due will come to you.
Landfill
--- Madhu Raghavendra
—for Niroj Satpathy, from his
exhibition Dhalav
Clocks in garbage dump homesick
teach time how to put out
a lamp wick with fingers.
The hands flap like wings,
record plates rotate
between the teeth squeal,
straps of slippers drag photocopies
of SOPs of the human bodies
The compass measures the circumference
of rust, the geometry box must
have a protractor to measure
the angle at which the noose
tightens from the charging point.
What you thought was discarded
is lying on its stomach with its head
resting between its hands
watching you go waste.
Daydreaming
The beginning of the month,
salary has been credited.
What’s budgeted is budgeted —
the groceries, school fees, rents,
electricity, house help, Netflix and cosmetics.
Governments are phlebotomists
who gently puncture veins, draw taxes,
give us a barbed wire country, roads and rigs,
talk a little about nuclear war and army,
tell us it’s for our own safety.
Save some contingency for postcards and poets;
write to a stranger, stick a love stamp, and post
it.
Poets have no country, veins, or salaries, they
wait
for your postcards in their daydreams as you
buy their books and read their poems, in barter.
Read
--- Madhu Raghavendra
Read this poem loudly
As loudly as you can
Don’t be ashamed
Don’ think it will be lost in void
Don’t bother about who is listening
Don’t worry about who will understand
For long, we have read poems quietly
Selfishly to ourselves
We have been unwilling or scared
Or thought no one cares
And put them back on book shelves
Erased them from streets
Kept poetry from lighting revolutionary torches
For long, we have let dictators speak loudly
And thought poetry will stand
And say something back.
Not unless we read poems loudly
Loud enough to reach beyond the radius of hate.
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Bio:
Madhu Raghavendra is a
poet, artist, and curator, who has authored five books of poetry, Make Me Some
Love to Eat, Stick No Bills, Being Non-essential, Going Home and Seeking The
Infinite. He was a poet-in-residence at the International Writing Program Fellowship,
University of Iowa, and the Charles Wallace Writing Fellowship, University of Stirling.
He collaborates with global artists to create cross disciplinary poetry
experiences, and his poems have been set to classical music and contemporary
dance in the United States, Finland and the Netherlands. His poems have also
been read in the parliamentary speech of South African province. He conducts
poetry workshops for young adults, and uses poetry as a tool in development
conversations. He has participated in PEN Emergency World Voices Congress of
Writers at the United Nations Headquarters, New York. He curates the
multidisciplinary Ajanta Ellora Arts Residency.
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