Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 9, Number 1. May 2026. ISSN: 2581-7094
The Patriarch Killjoy
--- Soibam Haripriya
too much has been said
of feminist killjoys
unable to take a joke
while men banter over stories of
overbearing wives
images of a bullet and a wedding ring
asking which one will kill faster
but it's the women, statistically
speaking,
who are murdered by the gun, by the
wedding ring
they do not love their equals
these patriarch killjoys
I remember my childhood
with a tyrant of an uncle
a celebrated intellectual
how we collectively held in our
breath
when he walks in
we'd switched off the television
rushed to our books
and let out a sigh of relief when he
left
the few unimportant women in the
family
cut the vegetables the way he
wanted
cooked the way he wanted
we were told he was kind
and kind he was
and loved he was
mostly loved by me
but he was
just a bit of a patriarch killjoy
who, in their intellectual meetings of
men
says things like,
a woman should be kicked five times a
day
they say, hey, killjoy
learn to take a joke or two
in this nation of women-killed
they say men are the casualties of
marriages
as if they didn't own slaves - a cook, a
cleaner, a helper, a whore
i turned over the old laws
told my daughter she is better than the
rest
of them men
my husband raged all night
said, i am teaching the wrong things
men, women are equal, one is no better
yet he doesn't know to fold, to be
patient
to love without remorse, without cruelty
to give up a bit of oneself in the
narrative
the truth is, i am teaching her the
truth
the patriarch killjoys
should smile a bit more
and learn to take a truth or two
An Atlas of Small Parts
--- Soibam Haripriya
I keep my poems in fragments
in my head
There will be time, between chores, between wars,
between the rage of men, between what the world hurls at me
I could have been a poet, words breaking out of me
But the chores have butchered out my metaphors
Once in the sonography room, the radiologist asked me
recognising the cruelty of his kind
if I'd keep this faint heartbeat to grow
I told him that affection was a long-overdue event in my life.
To this map of circulations, I will give and give
the tenderness I have craved
To this atlas of small parts, I said
through all of your existence, if I too exist,
You do not have to wound alone.
There is much in the little
and that perhaps one day
between chores, between wars
I will be a poet.
Quietude
--- Soibam Haripriya
I am trying to say,
another word for the morning
after I have had my coffee
and the house wakes up to its din
all I can come up with
is resentment
I balled the scraps of quietude
in my pocket
not to go mad.
the sun slants differently
preparing for the approaching
winter
the cold will assemble all of us home
cozy is the word, you'd think
pain is a stain
like turmeric on tablecloth
it hold the sum of all that was
said
about your failings
I can be fake happy
make it real
I won't
the monsters he stews is in head
is his own penance.
he revels in his
galaxies of rumour
no truth can destroy
I gather my bitterness like herbs
Never live with a man
you once loved.
Afterdeath
--- Soibam Haripriya
What most remains after death must be
guilt,
much more so than emptiness
could haves and should haves
The caregiving that you could never do
to the satisfaction of the one you care
for
The mopping of floor that you did five
times yesterday
yet he refuses
to wear diapers.
You'd think he is trying your patience.
He isn't.
Absent sons, dutiful daughters.
You treat him like a child,
he is seething inside.
Stubborn, he holds all that you spoon
feed him in his cheeks.
Is this how we pass through life?
Infant you refusing to chew, trying all
the meagre patience of your working parents.
He, now, refusing to yield to your
coaxing.
He is in his underwear, feeling reduced.
You dress him up. He refuses help but.
He. Can't. Help. Himself.
He cries from the bathroom.
Nakedness has its limits.
Aware of his nakedness.
he hates you for it.
He falls but shuns the walking stick.
You cry.
Exasperated. Sitting next to him you
write of death and guilt.
we break each other's hearts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bio:
Soibam Haripriya is
an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities,
Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology- Delhi and a Faculty Member of
the Ethnography Lab. She was a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow at the South
Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin, 2022-2023. She was an FWO
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies,
Ghent University, Belgium, 2019-2021, and a Fellow at the Indian Institute of
Advanced Studies, Shimla 2018-2019. Zubaan, New Delhi published her (edited)
book Homeward (2022). Her key areas of interest are Gender,
Violence, Northeast India, and Poetry and/in Ethnography. Her recent work
looks at the phenomenon of viral videos and trolling in social
media and explores the intersection of Gender, New Media, and Digital
Ethnography. She is also a poet and a translator. Her poems have
appeared in anthologies such as Witness: The Red River Book of Poetry
of Dissent (2021), A Map Called Home (2018), Centrepiece (2017), 40
Under 40: An Anthology Of Post-Globalization Poetry (2016). Some of
her poems have been included in the issues of Muse India (May-June 2019),
Poetry at Sangam (July 2019), and the bi-monthly journal of Sahitya Akademi—
Indian Literature. Her translations have appeared in Crafting the Word (2019).
****************