Three Poems : Roopam Mishra

Ms. Roopam Mishra lives in Lucknow, India. She is a Research Scholar at the Department of English & Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow. She writes in Hindi, and in English since the age of thirteen. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in an anthology Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind, and in magazines, and journals like Confluence Magazine, Setu, Aspiring Writers’ Society e-zine, Rusty Truck, Café Dissensus, Literary Yard, Borderless Journal, Hastaksher, Sahityiki, Rhetorica Quarterly, etc.

Lost in Translation

 

The tall pampas grass stalks call out to you gleaming

silver bellowing in the pleasant monsoon breeze.

 

Paddy fields draw your eye as you drive past the countryside

unaware of the snakes hiding in ankle-deep water on the fields.

 

Dry, patchy lands make the sun-lit skies seem brighter and

the day harsher over the cracked grounds.

 

First drops of rain never reach the Earth’s bosom, they are

effervescent as they touch its skin.

 

There are six seasons as per the Hindu tradition but none

can be put in the tongue of the colonizer.

 

The colour of my skin gets lost in translation.

Moringa Tree

when I imagine a tree growing out of a person

I imagine it sprouting at the coccyx, climbing the spine as it grows

from beneath the skin. 

men don’t change cities, jobs, homes when faced with 

dejection, failure, abuse

the roots travel all the way to the earth’s core 

travelling down their thighs, knees, calves, toes.

roots find water several feet below the ground 

sprouting out of toes, fixating men in places unawares

establishing themselves firm, being fearful of letting go the soil

losing life.

grandfather buried moringa beans right above the well

it shades his charpoy, the well dry now.

a snake would coil at its base in heavy monsoon rains, scorching summer sun he would

watch it immovably, fear-struck.

the tree growing out of grandfather’s body, I saw roots down his toes,

branches towering overhead. his beloved moringa tree grew large, drumsticks 

hung down the branches like fear,

glistened like calm and tranquility in his pupils.

paralysed, he stayed alive and fearless until he was moved to the hospital 

in the city, away from the tree.

they chopped down the moringa tree after his demise

fearing his soul would return to lodge permanently in the

moringa tree.

Denied

The places you don’t let your children go

They go, nonetheless. Secretly, tip-toeing the periphery

As you lay in a deep slumber

Eyes fixated on a screen, your monotonous, blood-sucking,

Capitalist boot-licking. You lie back playing

Arm-chair politics, anxiety-driven, stock-market-stricken,

Wrapping a blindfold of convenience over your eyes; Children slip away 

Far from your grasp of authority, form their castles of quietude

Or furore—miles away from your constrictive shelter.

They slip away into the looming darkness of secrets wrapped in a million gauzy layers,

Of which they can’t make sense of until

Traversing the musky corridors of adolescence,

Making sense of anatomy, genetics, progeny, they find truths wrapped in

Crude, ugly charades. They befriend biased notions

Of gender, identity, and orientation; They become display shelves 

Of masculinist perceptions—

Weighing their worth through prejudiced scales, they slip away

From the cradle into the muck and filth of age, 

Searching, seeking, watching, reading answers of questions

Forbidden, prohibited, banned,

Hidden by you behind barred doors,

On locked floors, inaccessible tabs, missing prompts

They find answers in halves, bask in the discovery,

Are poisoned by the pleasures denied, and acquisitions much sweeter.