Hey all!
I have a couple more poems in eFiction India: 'Of Lovings and Endings' in the August issue and 'Fear' in the September issue. There is an entire selection committee but the poet and academic, Ananya S Guha is the main poetry editor. I am reproducing the two poems below.
Teaching in Dyal Singh College (Delhi University) for a few months as of now. Trying to make the most of it, and realising that I love to teach. :-)
A young department friend and junior Mihir Vatsa has won the Srinivas Rayaprol poetry prize this year! How awesomely cool is that!! :D
Of lovings and endings
and you saw that it was growing
and it wasn’t really going
and you saw that it was thriving
and blooming and abiding
and without incentive surviving
and you wanted an ending
and you wanted it stopping
and you were tired of my inging
and irritated with my anding
and perhaps you were sick with waiting
and you wanted to break my ‘loving’
you simply wanted a period.
A full stop.
and achingly, heartbreakingly
you are making sure you get one
finally. Now.
Fear
It slips in stealthily, through cracks
of sunlight, chinks in curtains, split
seconds, spare moments
when you're patting your hair or twiddling
with the ring on your finger. Eliot
could show it to you in a handful of dust.
It is the hollow silence, the amorphous
blackness at the centre of your being
which threatens to disrupt and engulf you
Fear of the depths, of the heights, of reaching
beyond horizons. Fear of the deep black pit.
Fear of you. Fear of words, silence, going, coming,
staying away. Fear of time. Fear of myself. My thought-ghosts.
And the fear balloon grows bigger and bigger
until I forget what I am afraid of.
And then, there is only fear.
