Poems by ​Nabina Das 

​ 
Death and Else
 
age seven:
a white-sheeted stomach
an upward motion
drowning breath.
i’m  just a fly
on the wall thinking
why the old man
won’t sit up any more
get his shirt
worn-out leather belt
soaked dentures
and just go.
 
age eleven:
grandma is all marigold petals
her widow kitchen
shut and swept clean.
the hens she shooed
from the porch
aren’t happy either.
they miss her
rant as much as i do
her cow-dung mud floors
ladles bent
brass plates lying idle.
 
teenage:
she recounts the story
at our sleepover --
her sister had sat
where i sit
under the same ceiling
fan from where she
later dangled.
they had a song
about skirt hems
secret love letters.
her voice rebounds
against the ceiling’s hurt
old rose wall
sister’s school sash
the familiar ant crawling up.
 
early youth:
newspaper packagings never fail
to surprise, to raise curiosity
about a life in black and white, so
i sit down cross-legged poring
over THE TRIBUNE
with no dateline.
soon the newsprint too
gets shredded --
strip limbs
defaced alphabets
police-record names.
 
time of lust:
we kiss in a living shadow
away from the dead
body lying gently
in the front yard.
no one notices us
and the mourning
tastes like his stale
cigarette-tea-tongue
my chipped nails
fail to dig into his skin
and we miss the dead.
 
the other day:
my father’s face
is held in four frames
that don’t contain
his timex watch
the steel-rimmed glasses
a karl marx tie pin
and a pen of many decades.
the frames box him
like all things past,
they smooth his
tender jaw and here
he is young
he is in love

 
Night Train
 
Ball-
istic flow of
low moan,
grind-
ing
feet full of
falling notes
 
rain
slight tiles
like light
on heads
grass blades
 
drop-
lets of ink at
sky-belly,
spits from
mouths of
station clocks
 
Maria come
home, soon
so on my head
the pigeons
can prattle
before my gullet
gurgles
in fainting
and chokes
 
lay by my
side my Maria
more with
your smile
mile-long than
the hands
of the station
clock, the
night-wheels
of trains
the ink-print
on your hair,
spit of that man
in your
throat or moans
that coat
your ride back home

About the poet

Nabina Das is a Hyderabad-based poet and writer who has two poetry collections and two fiction books. She is the winner of several national and internal prizes and residency grants such as Prakriti Foundation poetry prize, UNISUN poetry prize, NYS Summer Writing Conference award, Sangam House Fiction Fellowship, Charles Wallace Fellowship in Creative Writing, and several others. Nabina teaches creative writing in universities and workshops and dabbles in journalism and street theater, her old hobbies.