Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 9, Number 1. May 2026. ISSN: 2581-7094
My Friend Who Escaped
--- Linthoi Ningthoujam
You escaped only in a laangjam phanek
and emptiness on your back.
You have been planting it everywhere:
abandoned halls decrepit colleges
relief camp after relief camp.
This emptiness that seeks only the warm silhouette
of your homestead.
You were convinced you would return;
you had seen it in the eyes of the mother goddess
Kondong Lairembi,
the beckoning:
even gods and goddesses need people
not only the other way round.
Sipping your tea little by little as if rationing,
you swore:
Where I come from, a 500 rupee note jumps out
every time I open my hand,
no less!
This death in the camp is only temporary.
Nothing much has changed since.
The hills are still at arm’s length,
evenings still scatter puffs of turmeric,
guns still appear in every poem,
a goddess still longs;
except technology upgrades like drone bombings,
and moth eating away my friend’s hand.
A Wish
--- Linthoi Ningthoujam
Some of us are birds,
some trees.
I am a laangmeidong spinning,
feathers braiding chlorophyll,
turning into a sana-khongnang,
hungering for the secrecy of the earth
to unlatch
and mushroom
upon the riots of my home.
*laangmeidong: hornbill bird, featured in a tragic
folk tale of Manipur
sana-khongnang: peepal tree, often considered sacred
in Meitei belief
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Bio:
Linthoi Ningthoujam’s
poems have been published in The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City, The
Bombay Literary Magazine, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022, among
others. She was a runner-up for the Deodar Prize 2025 for her short story.
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