Neeti Singh, Gujarat, India
Eagle wet-winged, swoops in
through the curtain of arterial dream.
The continuous fall of liquid,
splintered sliced moons
spread-eagled on Hyundai panes.
The incoming breath and burden
of needs, what will happen next?
Who will buy me parmesan cheese
and feed my appetite for Rilke’s
poems, orchids, red wine, raw silk?
The sinuous spin of yarn and sin,
paper-laws of gender justice,
the trail of Raga Darbari down the street,
the drum of rain on tin roofs,
and plastic—an army of rising stench—
rag, garbage, gareeb.
A sneaking pair of love birds kissing
behind a neem tree,
rain and dusk and an open urinal.
Make me a cup of sweet tea—
adrak cheeni chai in a sublime overboil.
Tea takes its place as national heritage,
with forest lions and peacocks
rummaging in the shrubs for snakes.
Poet, translator, researcher and associate professor of English, Neeti Singh specialises in the field of Cultural Studies and the interface between literature, history and religious studies. She holds an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in English and teaches graduate and postgraduate courses in English Literature and Theory at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, in Vadodara, Gujarat. She has published four books so far, two of them being works of English translation from their original in Punjabi.