POETRY EDITOR ANANYA S GUHA's note:
Poem 1
I am Chinki How are you?
My mother
I have seven mothers
seven sisters
Their crimson tethered to the Indian standard time
And handcuffed with anti –sedition laws
Questions like “Do you eat snakes”
Sting in a flash from my footprints wherever I go
Frigid entry points,
Fault lines on the skeleton of a nation healed wrongly
A dislocated joint
In the wounded conscience of a nation .
Poem 2: Protest Poem against recent supreme court judgement.
Section 377 beneath the leaves of grass
An antique fence of demarcation
on the cemetery of love dreams
coffins down lowed
beneath the ground
dreams closeted
below the heart
The names on the tombstones,
tales of camaraderie laid to rest
read like posthumous gallantry award list.
the ray of hope
on the grass of time
as leaves of grass engulf the names on tombstones
in a toppling of time.
Falling in love is a revolutionary act
Consummation is a posthumous honor.!
NOTE: Walt Whitman's poems titled Leaves of Grass on queer love has inspired this poem and there is an oblique reference to it.
Poem 3.
(None of the Above NOTA)
The bullets from the Maoists and the CRPF
burned a NOTA shaped hole
in the ballots of the tribals.
Poem 4.
History
Lynched pages of history are glued together,
they hinge on the swords.
My poems try to split those pages apart
without crimsoning the edges.