Size / / /

Content warning:


I

To the Ascari, a poem is
neither found nor composed,
it is always planted.

The poem is read as it
grows and gains shoot and
leaves and bark and climbs
stanza-wise to the Sun.

Words on these poems do not
grow old, similes discarded as
easily as leaves, while roots
drink deep of the times'
passions and feed flowers as
beautiful as youth.

II

Some poem trees are planted
in simple square lined plots,
allowing you to walked enchanted
among their thousand perfumed thoughts.

Others are in wild tangled woods,
and unlike the centipede-bodied
Ascari, humans cannot walk
easily through these woods. Once
a lifetime they may go in.
They wander naked and mapless,
branches and thorns tearing skin,
blood trickling down to feed
the forest.
Until at last they come to
the tree that speaks to them,

They run their hands over
its rough bark and are granted,
sometimes in flower, sometimes in leaf,
the answer they always carried
with them.

III

To be granted a seedling
from a poem tree is
both a blessing and a curse.

To be bound to the earth.
To find a house and land you
will live on for the rest
of your life.

To plant the seedling and
watch its words slowly grow
and unfold with age and
demand that you bequeath it
to your child.

Who will look upon it
every day with the resentment
of the certainly fated.

Who on some days will
approach it with axe or saw,
and with an unexpected wind,
feel its branches caressing
his face, and who will then
walk back ashamed.

And who on other days will
find a leaf laying casually
on her desk, who will
run her fingers down its
perfect veins in wonder and
press it, with all the others,
between the pages of a book,
certain that she will one day
understand them all.




Rohinton Daruwala lives and works in Pune, India. He tweets as @wordbandar and blogs at https://wordbandar.wordpress.com/. His first collection of poems is The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu (Speaking Tiger 2016). His work has previously appeared in Strange Horizons, New Myths, Star*Line, Liminality, Through the Gate, and Silver Blade.
Current Issue
4 Dec 2023

“Ask me something only I would know.” You say this to your wife because you know you’re human. You can feel it in the familiar ache in your back, and the fear writhing in your guts. You feel it in the cold seeping into your bare feet from the kitchen floor. You know you’re real because you remember.
now, there is the shape...humanoid, but not / necessarily human
He came from a salt mine that used to be solid all the way through
Issue 27 Nov 2023
Issue 20 Nov 2023
Issue 13 Nov 2023
Issue 6 Nov 2023
Issue 30 Oct 2023
Issue 16 Oct 2023
Issue 9 Oct 2023
Issue 2 Oct 2023
Issue 25 Sep 2023
Issue 18 Sep 2023
Load More
%d bloggers like this: