Linda Ashok
(India)
Our Language
This little girl
sells cow-dung cakes
Knows a thing or two about languages
The other day she came to me
with a basketful of sores
and I was allowed to pick up
the most painful ones
The others were healing
in which her stories cannot be read
Grape-like, she dropped one by one—
her everydays that bloom along the walls
on which she stamps her cakes
Light, she said, can only translate
the leftover. Her plate is clean
since birth. She can only feel warmth—
a spiny hedgehog
She knows she can translate
the dung into fuel
and save the village from dying
Each pain was a little documentary
that melted on my tongue
in which her missing eyes have no record
of the passing world
the time-lapse
that encapsulated us
Our Daily Pain
1
I walk to the foothills of a dream
that was once a language
spoken by the winds
and the local pines
Sometimes trekkers
with altitude sickness
would come this far
and wonder how horses
they spoke so well once
are now forgotten from the belly
This is a dream, you remind me,
and I open my eyes in disapproval
If this was once a language
then it remains so—just the sounds
are lost. That too in want of love,
in search of Urdu; a muslin
even in anger, is sugar.
2
You cross the water body
that spread itself like amoeba—
the closer you are, the wider it grows
until in the whisper of a pine
you learn that the only way
to reach the other end
is to pluck the tongue,
fold it into a boat
and wade across
till dawn would
bleed from
the gums
3
I am hungry.
What have you for me?
Languages never paid for anything
but fire in love or in war.
Even those pines
The wind
They set ablaze many a home
Your tongue restless
craving to reply
but you speak in your body
if I would like some pain, gluten free?
Mirror
I love listening to you talking about trees
and guessing the kind of bird by the sound
of her wings. You say it is an art of a canvas
leaving her colors and brushes as bouquets
to her painter.
Many a time, you know, I just wanted to keep
quiet and let the morning’s spider light weave
me love that I feel when I hear you talking
to the trees and meditate on their wisdom
that runs light years deep.
Tell me, did a canvas ever refuse you, have you
been isolated in an island of birds, have you
ever walked strange countries and taken aback
by stories of your homeland on sale?
How did you feel? Did you walk up to them?
Did you hear if they spoke the language that
the bird left in your tongue? How did you feel
being auctioned not in person, but in grief?
Many a times, you know, I love listening
to you, I love seeing you naked and take
pride in this belonging. So that if a sudden
impulse handcuffs my life, you would know
that a peace-treaty is already signed.
(appears in whorelight, Hawakal Publishers, Aug 20, 2017.)
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Bio
Author of Whorelight, Linda Ashok is the 2017 Charles Wallace India Fellow in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Chichester, UK. Linda’s poems and reviews have appeared/forthcoming in several publications, online and in print, including Crab Orchard Review, The Common, The McNeese Review, Poetry Kanto, Friends Journal, Axolotl, Skylight 47, The Big Bridge Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poets, Mascara Literary Review, The Rumpus and others. Linda is the Founder/President of RædLeaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts (2012) and sponsors the annual RL Poetry Award (since 2013). More at: lindaashok.com
More at: lindaashok.com