List of questions

A large group of kids
kidding
and following
their cattle
to the forest.

Across the vale
on the sunlit slope
a bell ringing
as low as the bells
hung on the napes
of these hungry cattle.

Down on the river
a broken, single wire bridge waiting
for the big people from the big city
for some years now

and up here on this passage
I’m a list of questions.

But who is to answer?

- Haris Adhikari

(featured in the poetry forum 01.26.12)

editor's note: Poets will ask anyway; we make our own answers. - mh

The tilt

Two people together
trying to tilt toward themselves
an umbrella – unfurled
and so
with stretched tiny holes.

Is the sleet something?

- Haris Adhikari

(featured in the poetry forum 11.29.11)

editor's note: Is it? Well, only if you feel the cold. Is everything something? If not, that would be something anyway. - mh

If she were a witch

If she were a witch, I guess you wouldn’t be living.
There was no earthquake in her screams, she was nothing
but wounds all over – red, blue, brown, purple –
bleeding on the junction – a matter of extreme curiosity for kids around
peeping from below your hips, or running after your footsteps.
Perhaps her busted head was a football!
Perhaps your boots, canes and stones were not enough, so
she was yelling at you to drag and thrash her more!

If she were a witch, I guess you wouldn’t be living.
Either she would surely escape flying on her broomstick
or just vanish with a simple click of her fingers right in the beginning
or furiously hurl you into a dark cave where
she would avenge by forcing you to eat human feces
the way you forced her, or, she would hammer your hands and legs
and teach you a lesson by pulling out your teeth
with more force and fury than you used to display your bravado.

If she were a witch, I guess you wouldn’t be living
and your children wouldn’t die of dysentery or of fever. Possession
is what you did to her, not what she did or did not.
She – just a single finger, and you – an entire village,
what a mad swarm of bees stinging a life to almost death!
Neither she spoke scary words nor called a thunder down.
What’s black magic? Why would she only leave the marks of her teeth
on your thighs or arms when she could have the whole of you?

- Haris Adhikari

(featured in the poetry forum 10.09.11)

editor's note: And since we are living, she can't be, after all. Oh, my! All this blood on our hands. - mh

Splattering of rain

Until it is late midnight
rain splatters into exhausted eardrums
and saturates the sleep,

What a headache, pal!
The noise is so exasperating – and unceasing,

One turns this way and that way –
reads for a while, but finds water dripping
from the book as well
onto his belly…
and cuddles up against the warm blanket
but the blanket is no wall in between –

- Haris Chand Adhikari

(featured in the poetry forum 08.23.11)

editor's note: ...and parentheses are no umbrella! - mh