Category Archives: Poems

The Two-State Dissolution (2): Landsman, Burch, Lehr, Foster, Galef, Soderling, Kenny, Helweg-Larsen, Smith, Bales, Shore

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Peggy Landsman, ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain‘

Hagar and Sarah should have talked,
Laughed together when alone.
Who did Abraham think he was?
Ha-Yehudi ha-rishon?*

Ishmael and Isaac should have been
Boon companions, closer than brothers,
Passing their days doing their chores,
Tending their father’s sheep together…

Staying up late entertaining themselves
Arguing over the numbers of stars
Each was the first to have named.

*”Ha-Yehudi ha-rishon” means “The first Jew” in Hebrew.

Michael R. Burch, ‘Frail Envelope of Flesh’
for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable…

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss…

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears…

Quincy Lehr, ‘Passive Voice’

History is back in passive voice.
All you can do is watch. The teams were picked;
the commentary doesn’t match the plays.
The game is rigged, and everybody sees.

The game is rigged, and everybody sees,
but referees ignore it, and debate
is limited to the cheap seats far away.
The villains are the only proper nouns.

The villains are the only proper nouns,
the only ones worth mentioning besides
the nebulous abstractions for the rest.
None believe what everyone accepts.

History is back in passive voice.
The game is rigged, and everybody sees
the villains are the only proper nouns.
None believe what everyone accepts.

Gail Foster, ‘The Heap’

How many does it take to make a right?
Go fling another on. The heap grows high
Before too long it will obscure the light
And then where will we be. The end is nigh
And still it reaches up towards the sky
How many more, the village women weep
Of all our sons and brothers have to die
While we pile wrong on wrong upon the heap

Remember sky, how blue it was and bright
And wide, when only birds and clouds did fly
And moons and stars were visible at night
When women laughed and children didn’t cry
What use is wrong for wrong and eye for eye
The world grows blind and bitter and we reap
What we have sown and see our rivers dry
While we pile wrong on wrong upon the heap

What use a pile of pacifists? The sight
May cause a running man to stop and sigh
The wise man said, and think about the fight
And for a fleeting moment wonder why
They chose to sacrifice themselves, deny
The life force and there lie in peaceful sleep
They make a monument, he said, nearby
While we pile wrong on wrong upon the heap

Dear God, when will it end? When will you try?
The heap grows higher and the sides too steep
We love our neighbours with the guns we buy
While we pile wrong on wrong upon the heap

Daniel Galef, ‘Desert Kite’

These endless shifting sands—
They’re always changing hands,
But you can’t make bricks without breaking a little hay.
With oil the streets are pavèd;
Since Solomon and David,
They draft a brand-new atlas every day.
The apostles! The epistles!
And the fossil fuels and missiles—
Like manna in the wilderness they fall!
The land of Abrahamics
Now hosts General Dynamics
With their guardian angels gliding over all.

Janice D. Soderling, ‘Out of Paradise’

A closely woven stillness lines the air,
like linen bedding in a lifted coffin.
Though silence is a hallmark of our time, not often
has the hush been so oppressive. Where
the sand fox sprawls, sprawls too the shattered hare.
Cadavers of gazelle and roe deer stiffen;
the wadded pods of thorn trees burst. If when
you ponder on this devastated garden,
its wretched shame, its bottomless despair,
think not animal, but human, shreds in Eden.
And human was the animal lately passing there.

Janet Kenny, ‘After’

We saw them sweep in like a wolf on the fold.
We hypocrites judge as if time was involved.

Lament, all you lovers whose loved ones are gone.
Condemn, all you judges now grief is your song.

After the fury what’s left to repair?
Oh impotent jury, your conscience is there.

No poem will save us no tears will avail.
No weapons will spare us from history’s gale.

No art can encompass the scale of this rage.
“Tomorrow” is yesterday trapped in a cage.

Robin Helweg-Larsen, ‘Books’

When Science and Experiment
were done through myth and dream, it meant
that Bronze Age herders showed their bent
in naïve tribal Books.

The Israelites searched 40 years
for good land, unprotected, bare,
and slaughtered all those living there –
justified by their Book.

The Muslims conquered far and wide
(and called it peace, and millions died)
to spread new tales we now deride,
new versions of that Book.

The Christians sent wave after wave
crusading, claiming that they’d save
the “Holy Land”… made it a grave,
thanks to their stupid Book.

You advertise benevolence
but justify intolerance
by quoting this or that sentence
from one or other Book.

You bomb a house, a baby dies…
lift up your eyes so we can rise
above the vicious tribal lies:
those stupid, stupid Books.

J.D. Smith, ‘Report from the Field’

I rang the doorbell
of the demolished house
and was met by its generations,
fully armed.

Marcus Bales, ‘Heal or Hate’

You lift or do not lift the weight;
You’re either dealt-to or you deal.
Pick the other, pick the one,
The choice you have is heal or hate,
And you can’t ever hate and heal

Call it nature, nurture, fate
Genetics, fantasy, or real —
Blame whatever – when you’re done
You lift or do not lift the weight.
You’re either dealt-to or you deal.

Short-term crooked looks like straight;
Short-term truth sounds like a spiel.
In both the short and longer run
The choice you have is heal or hate —
And you can’t ever hate and heal

I know, the choices don’t seem great.
They lack in zip or sex appeal.
But no one said this would be fun.
You lift or do not lift the weight.
You’re either dealt-to or you deal.

You must massage your mental state
To organize the way you feel
In spite of all the bullshit spun.
The choice you have is heal or hate,
And you can’t ever hate and heal

You often have to simply wait
And sift to see what’s really real
Since growing needs both rain and sun.
You lift or do not lift the weight;
You’re either dealt-to or you deal.

Late or early, it’s too late.
You’re living through the slow reveal.
The game is rigged: it can’t be won
Or even stopped once it’s begun.
You lift or do not lift the weight;
And though you’re dealt-to or you deal
The choice you have is heal or hate.
You cannot ever hate and heal.

Marion Shore, ‘Peace’

I came upon a garden in the sun,
where children ran and played among the trees,
and entering, I asked two little ones:
“Why are you here? And where are your families?”
One answered, “I was with my dad and mom.
We went into a café for a Coke.
And then I heard somebody scream ‘a bomb!’
and all that I could see was fire and smoke.”
The other said, “I went outside to play,
the street was crowded. Tanks were all around.
Soldiers were shooting. I tried to run away.
I heard a shot and fell down on the ground.
No one heard me crying for my mother.”
The first child said. “I wish I could go home.”
“So do I. But at least we have each other.”
The sun was rising higher in the sky:
my dream was fading, and as I waved goodbye,
‘Salaam,’ said one. The other said ‘Shalom.’

Yuval Noah Harari: We suffer not from the narrowness of the land, but from the narrowness of the mind. https://youtu.be/Uncfi9cgZWo

It’s all about stories: https://youtu.be/L82XOw9sVkY

Acknowledgements:
Peggy Landsman: ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’, first published in The HyperTexts
Michael R. Burch: ‘Frail Envelope of Flesh’, first published in The Lyric
Daniel Galef: ‘Desert Kite’, first published in Light
Janice D. Soderling: ‘Out of Paradise’, first published in The Rotary Dial and included in her collection ‘War: Make that City Desolate’

Photo: “Scenes from Gaza Crisis 2014” by United Nations Photo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Using form: Nonce form, riddles: Aaron Poochigian, ‘The New New Amsterdam’

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I am the scam
you go in for, the diamonds in the pavement,
ecstatic evenings caught on traffic cam,
rare toilets and consensual enslavement.

Scholars and brawlers are inside of me.
What could I be?

I am
the new New Amsterdam.

I am those glam
high-rises and the derelicts’ despair,
graffiti worthy of the Met, and sham
Versace hawked to chumps in Union Square.

Purists and tourists are inside of me.
What could I be?

I am
the new New Amsterdam.

I am the ham
ironist, the perverse poobah of shock,
the firetruck stranded in a rush-hour jam
while conflagration rages round the block.

Birders and murders are inside of me.
What could I be?

I am
the new New Amsterdam.

I am the slam
Where Subway Ends, a scrum of mad musicians,
Sunday phone calls with a far-off fam,
Halal street food, and infinite ambitions.

Shoo-ins and ruins are inside of me.
What could I be?

I am
the new New Amsterdam.

*****

Aaron Poochigian writes: “Riddles go back to a time before ‘English’ was our English, before Shakespeare and Chaucer, the time of bards and Beowulf. The Anglo-Saxon riddles have the rhythms of poetry. They tell it slant like poetry does sometimes. The tantalizing, first-person self-description that defines the genre gave me a ‘way in’ to talk about a subject that would have been too vast otherwise—New York City.”

‘The New New Amsterdam’ was first published in The Rising Phoenix Review.

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His latest poetry collection, American Divine, the winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, came out in 2021. He has published numerous translations with Penguin Classics and W.W. Norton. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and Poetry.
aaronpoochigian.com
americandivine.net

Twitter: @Poochigian
Facebook: Aaron Poochigian
Instagram: aaronpoochigian

Photo: “NYC Night Life” by Tom Roeleveld is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Neanderthals’

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Watch how the status of the poor
Neanderthals will rise
when we admit we thank them for
red hair, white skin, blue eyes.

*****

“All non-Africans today may have a roughly equal proportion of Neanderthal DNA, but some of the most visible physical traits appear to have been inherited especially by modern Europeans, and northern Europeans in particular. Here is a list of traits that distinguished Neanderthals from Homo sapiens, but that you could also have inherited if you are of European or Western Eurasian descent.

  • Rufosity : i.e. having red hair, or brown hair with red pigments, or natural freckles.
  • Fair skin, hair and eyes : Neanderthals are believed to have had blue or green eyes, as well as fair skin and light hair. Having spent 300,000 years in northern latitudes, five times longer than Homo sapiens, it is only natural that Neanderthals should have developed these adaptive traits first.”

I skipped 11 traits to get to these two. If you want the whole list, they’re at https://www.eupedia.com/europe/neanderthal_facts_and_myths.shtml

I’m just amused, of course, by the chance to label famously red-white-and-blue flag-waving countries as Neanderthals: the US, UK, France, Netherlands, and Russia… (as well as many other less historically aggressive countries around the world).

This poem was first published in Rat’s Ass Review (as are many politically incorrect poems), Fall/Winter 2024 – thanks, Roderick Bates!

Image: ChatGPT from RHL prompt

Using form: Susan Jarvis Bryant, ‘To Autumn’

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Your flare of red turns Winter’s hoary head
To gaze upon your blaze and feel the heat
      And fever of your beat.
Your spice and sizzle catch his breath and spread
Through icy sighs to melt the lick of frost
      That dusts the dawn
With hints of chill intent. His plot is lost
In honeyed-apple charm and plummy balm.

You temper smitten Winter’s bitter breeze.
Your foxy bronze and lush rufescent blush;
      Your gold and ruby rush
 Ignite the leaves that shiver on the trees.
You burn through thickest wisps of morning mist.
      Birds laud your glow.
The granite skies grow blue as clouds are kissed
By dreams so hot they thaw all thoughts of snow.

When it’s your time to go you’ll fade with grace
As branches shed their tawny tears of grief –
      Each crisp and crinkled leaf
Will pool and pile. As Winter shows his face
Your fluffy, brush-tailed fans will slump and sleep.
      They’ll hit the sack
Until they spy the coyest crocus peep –
Spring’s message to the world that you’ll be back!

*****

Susan Jarvis Bryant writes: “My poem is a quirky nod to Keats’ timeless and beautiful ode with a much louder and sassier version of the fall with not a mellow trait in sight.  There is no time for mourning loss in this poem. Autumn vows (in true Terminator style) she’ll be back! The form I chose is a nod to the traditional but with two short lines in each stanza – an act of rebellion in keeping with this fiery season.”

‘To Autumn’ was originally published in Snakeskin 321.

Susan Jarvis Bryant is originally from the U.K., but now lives on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published on The Society of Classical Poets, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in The Lyric, Trinacria, and Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems and Extreme Sonnets II anthologies. Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition and has been nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize. She has just published her first two books, Elephants Unleashed and Fern Feathered Edges.

Photo: “Fall Color on the Pond” by fossiled is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The Two-State Dissolution: Yankevich, Kenny, Helweg-Larsen, Foster, Vaughan, Jackson, Bales, Burch

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Leo Yankevich: ‘The Terrorist’

Only six, she stands before a tank,
looking at its armour, while inside
soldiers heed orders from a higher rank.
There isn’t any place for her to hide,
no door to head for, no abandoned car
to slide beneath. Pure terror rules her land.
When finally crushed, she rises past the star
of David, with a stone clutched in her hand.

Janet Kenny: ‘Didn’t They Know?’
(In memory of a lost poem by Robert Mezey)

Didn’t they know that when they swarmed
and slashed and slaughtered what they saw
as an oppressor’s nest, the rage
that they aroused would turn and pour
with molten heat back on their house?

Their captive children now must pay,
small targets in a concrete cage.
No treaty, pact, no peace no truce.
Didn’t they know? Didn’t they know?

No map to show another way.
Olive farmers pay for crimes
of other nations, other times.
No mercy here, no one is just.
Two agonies, two brains concussed.

Nothing to see here. False alarm.
Police not needed to disarm
two weeping peoples each aware
that no solution slumbers there.
Hearth and cradle now makes clear
an ancient poem brought them here.

Where is the psalm that both can share?
Where is the psalm that both can share?

Robin Helweg-Larsen: ‘Both Sides Justify Their Terrorism’

When pleas for justice are of no avail,
when governments praise death and theft,
and courts say you’re in error;
when the UN is blocked to fail,
the only recourse left
is terror.

When no one cares that Yahweh willed
that Jews alone should have this land
(and God’s never in error)
and prior residents must be killed,
yet they won’t leave, they force your hand:
to terror.

Gail Foster: ‘On The Occasion of Benjamin Netanyahu Quoting Dylan Thomas’

Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight
How many children have you killed today
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

Your anger and your ego burning bright
Are razing all that’s standing in your way
Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight

How many have you sent into the light
Before they even had the time to pray
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

How many have you saved or sent in spite
Up to the sky in ashen clouds of grey
Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight

In clouds as those who in the fog and night
Were put in trains and disappeared away
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

You speak as if your soul was white as white
Yet deep inside you darkness holds its sway
Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

Tom Vaughan: ‘The Land’

Let’s pretend that the war
could be over, and peace
reigned even if only
this evening. O please

pick up your anger
and soak it with mine
in six large barrels
of miracle wine

and then let us dance
like lovers, as though
this land’s many meanings
didn’t all signal no

and we could make ploughshares
out of our swords
and translate the past
into one shared world

and even if dawn
will scatter the night
and send us both stumbling
into the light

where smooth olives glisten
in the warm sun
like belts of bright bullets
ripe for a gun.

Jean MacKay Jackson: ‘War’

Some say that war is bright flares and drama,
A glory of fireworks illumining skies.
This is all lies.
War is a child calling out for his mama
And getting no answer.
War is a merchant of hatred and grief:
War is a thief,
War is a cancer.
Some say that war is hell. Perhaps that is so.
Yet hell has a lack
Of innocent bystanders, hell has no
Collateral damage, no accidental black
Body-bags for old women and babies.
Hell has no maybes;
Everything makes sense.
In hell there is no defense:
You belong there. You chose your path.
Hell has a cold, hard justice drained of wrath.
War is the horrified look in the eye
Of a young person dying without knowing why.

Tom Vaughan: ‘Aleppo’

Never again we say, each time
never, never again,
and every time we mean it so
when it happens again

we watch it on our screens, and say
never, never again

we meet and vote and all agree
never, never again.

Marcus Bales: ‘Genocide is Genocide’

Genocide is genocide. There’s no
Legitimacy on the table. None.
Your killing and your maiming only show
What horrors piled on horrors you have done.

The US taught the method to the Germans
The Trail of Tears leads to the Holocaust.
And now Israeli policy determines
They’ll do the same in Gaza. That boundary’s crossed.

Why not, instead, a reconciliation,
Where all the old and evil wounds can be
Accepted by each side without probation?
With zealotry forgiven, all are free.

Until that happens, hate corrupts you all,
With “Ams Yisrael Chai” the new decree —
Unless it turns out that the final call
That wins is “From the river to the sea.”

And that’s the choice: that each side does the worst
That it can do to keep the hatreds growing,
Shouting slogans of revenge, and cursed
To trade atrocities that keep the business going.

The other choice is reconciliation.
Yes, all the old and evil wounds will be
Accepted by each side without probation,
And zealotry forgiven, to be free.

If “Look at what they did to us!” is your
Refrain, then all you’ve done is to condemn
Your children to a world where they’ll endure
Their children’s gloat: “Look what we did to them!”

There’s always someone left to live resenting
The evils your revenges made you do —
And they will spend their hearts and souls inventing
A suitable revenge to take on you.

Be strong enough for reconciliation
Where all the old and evil wounds must be
Accepted by each side without probation.
With zealotry forgiven, all are free.

Michael R. Burch: ‘Epitaph for a Palestinian Child’

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

*****

Acknowledgements:

Leo Yankevich: ‘The Terrorist’, collected in ‘Tikkun Olam & other poems’, Counter Currents, 2012
Tom Vaughan: ‘The Land’, published on Hull University Middle East Study Centre website, 2022, and in Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s December 2022 Politics Newsletter
Tom Vaughan: ‘Aleppo’, published in Snakeskin 233, October 2016
Michael R. Burch: ‘Epitaph for a Palestinian Child’, first published in Romantics Quarterly, and many places since. Michael R. Burch is the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, and its extensive collections of poetry include ones on both the Holocaust and the Nakba.

Photo: “Gaza war Nov2012” by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘The Self-Aware’

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Most insecure are those, the self-aware:
for all their acts are pointless and they know it,
scurrying like ants on an eclair…
the universe, indifferent, looks askance.

This insecure mode breeds defensiveness
and therefore arrogance, not least in poets
who know their work especially valueless…
even to other ants.

*****

I think we poets, who can be so rude about other people, need to be rude about ourselves occasionally. Not that the universe cares one way or the other.

This poem was originally published in The Road Not Taken – A Journal of Formal Poetry – in Fall 2016. Thanks, Dr. Kathryn Jacobs!

Photo: “Ant picnic” by dmcneil is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Weekend read: Sonnet variation: Michael R. Burch, ‘Erin’

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All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They grope to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair …
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “My poem is set in the present and really has nothing to do with poverty. All that’s left of Ireland of yore is the young mother’s red hair, fair skin, a tendency toward melancholy (“despair), and her train of children. She’s a practicing Catholic except for a few affairs. Otherwise she’s a modern woman, drinking and flirting in a pub. I was trying to capture a bit of Ireland in a young mother, very loosely inspired by one of my Irish cousins who was a bit of a “wild child” in her youth.”

(Editor’s aside: My bad for thinking that “All that’s left” implied poverty, which was not in Michael R. Burch’s mind at all. True, Ireland goes through enormous swings of fortune, but the Ireland of even some years ago no longer matches the fabulously rich Ireland of today – the people are 50% richer than Americans or Norwegians…

2024 top GDP.png

… putting the UAE and Switzerland in the shade as well.)

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 22 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 61 times by 32 composers. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts.

Photo: “Irish Fire at the Barn” by Trey Ratcliff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

John Claiborne Isbell, ‘Mousse au chocolat’

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Rita is in her summer dress. She’s got
the mixer out and she is hard at work
perfecting home-made mousse au chocolat.
I for my part am typing like a clerk
 
at my computer. Rita’s got cacao
and mascarpone and banana, all
to form her own concoction. And just now,
she brings a spoon to sample it. You’d call
 
her labor sui generis – you won’t
turn up this recipe. And yet, the tongue
delights – the eyes close – as the do or don’t
of custom pales. The mousse is made. I’ve sung
 
my wife in her blue dress with its red spots,
I’ve sung the kitchen where she takes her ease –
the house’s heart, with all its pans and pots.
I’ve sung the afternoon. Bring more of these.

*****

John Claiborne Isbell writes: ” ‘Mousse au chocolat’ is a true story inspired by my wife Rita’s taste for improvisation when cooking. The results are invariably delicious. As for the form, it’s just four quatrains of iambic pentameter. My volume Allegro is light verse; I ought really to write more of it.”

‘Mousse au chocolat’ was published in Snakeskin 321, October 2024.

John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018), with a cello on the cover and available on Amazon; he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023) both available free online. John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee, representing France in the European Championships in 1991, and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.

An Outline of Romanticism in the West https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0302

Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850  https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0346

Staël, Romanticism and Revolution: The Life and Times of the First European  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/stael-romanticism-and-revolution/E808497413C10F2814375C7CF131E221

Photo: “Mousse au chocolat” by eric.delcroix is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Walls of Work’

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With walls of work that never wear away
my house is halfway hilled above a plain;
ghosts of unwritten books moan and complain;
I step out on to scree, sloping and grey.
I’ve tried for thirty years to build up high,
raising five kids free of smog, vice and town;
the treacherous slope of scree slips, I fall down,
am shown – kids grown and gone – more work’s a lie.

Now I’m spreadeagled on the eager shale,
not daring move, gripping at slipping fears
of sliding down to sneered-at country vale
where poor folk pick, don’t buy, fresh fruit from trees
and I could go, unknown, to known warm seas,
run barefoot on the beach of my ideas.

*****

First published in The Road Not Taken – The Journal of Formal Poetry in Summer 2016 (but written a decade before that); thanks, Dr. Kathryn Jacobs!

“While everybody on the beach is relaxing, this chap runs by like he stole running.” by Gerald Lau is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Shamik Banerjee, ‘The Auto Drivers of K.G. Street’

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They know well when I clock out. Sharp
At five, on K.G. Street,
They welcome me with every tooth
And lead me to their seat.

Five friends—senescent, pyknic, bald,
In Khakis—ironed, clean,
With brand-new autorickshaws that
Are painted taupe and green.

One masticates areca nuts.
The shortest one takes khaini.
The other two smoke beedis by
A tall Mahogany.

They fall in with a mental pact
That tells them not to seek
To win me, for each one’s assigned
A fixed day of the week

To drive me home. “Today’s my turn,”
One says and bids me in.
While driving he tells stories that
Block off the traffic’s din:

The student loan he’s willing to
Take for his only daughter;
The municipal board has swelled
The price of urban water.

Arrived, I ask about the fare.
“Ah! Saab“, he shyly says.
I take a fifty rupee note—
A glow upon his face.

*****

Shamik Banerjee gives the following word meanings:
“Khaki: A type of cloth.
Khaini: A type of chewable tobacco
Beedi: Indian cigarette
Saab: Sir
K.G. stands for Kasturba Gandhi, the wife of Mahatma Gandhi. Most streets/ lanes/ roads in India are named after famous personalities, especially those who fought for our freedom.” 
‘The Auto Drivers of K.G. Street’ was first published by Willow Review.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India, where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by Sparks of Calliope, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, Ink Sweat & Tears, Autumn Sky Daily, Ekstasis, among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

Photo: Auto Drivers in Guwahati, Assam.