Jyothsnaphanija

LEARNING

Listen to the audio version read by Melissa Cotter.

How long did the rain play violin?
Till the nostalgic scent of mango leaves lightened my sleep?
Till the insecure window cuddled the coarse wind?
I dream of my inexistent childhood
How my fingers press pause and rewind buttons of the unheard rhymes
Where children pronounce sugary lies, stars twinkle on playgrounds
I was a child then, feeling the acrimony of the words,
Comprehending the glasswork language.
My language miscarried the optic words. Every word that has a perpendicular, alphabetic shade.
My vocabulary is grass.
My numerical learning is of the old cassette reels.
I spend the time now in staring at my abacus palms,
Squinting my eyes to read the sand.
My pupils respond to light
similar to the wet music
to the erased moon.
The rain is everywhere
Learning solitary poems
Adjusting its audacity.
I imagine it's appendix to my final note
of returning to steadfast keys.

* * *

MAKING THE GLASS

Listen to the audio version.

The length of the long afternoons turn into beads
With the painless waiting.
Bangles and bulbs in the vase
Drink the water left
When my thirst to hear words from the distance
Is liquefied in paleness.
The mailbox inks the paleness of my gaze
And my memories of the salutations.

Afternoons offer me A glass of paleness
That glass is proportionate to the green.
Those stones in the pot
When a crow is thirsty,
Incise the lies of fiction.

The evenings are swaddled with cabbage leaves
Containing water and iron.
I choose an old letter
Reading it's date backwards,
I forgive it's time of arrival
Overlooking the struck off lines.

Letters make fiction
I write fiction about making the glass.
Heat of a Sun umbrella
Weight of the long plait
Steepness of the flowers
Feathers and fume of a rugged handwriting
Uttering sentences in a monosyllabic stamp.

 

Dr. Jyothsnaphanija is Assistant Professor of English at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, University of Delhi, India. Her poetry has recently appeared in Spark, Pool, Page & Spine, Foliate Oak, Literary Orphans, IthacaLit, Melusine and others. Her first poetry collection Ceramic Evening, from whith the above poems appear, will be published in 2016. She blogs at phanija.wordpress.com.