Two Poems
By Prerna Bakshi
Visiting Kolkata after 15 years
Kantha saris.
Macchi markets.
Tangy puchkas.
Yellow taxis.
Pulled rickshaws.
Trams.
Old Victorian buildings.
Goddess Durga’s pamphlets plastered on the walls.
Mosaics and murals all around.
Everything looks the same
since I last visited.
Including the hammer and sickle
graffiti on the walls – faded or
turned brighter red instead…
not sure.
***
Mahua
Sitting under the shade of a
Mahua tree, I wonder if
it has ever tasted its own produce – alcohol.
I wonder if it even knows
it produces alcohol.
It continues to have an identity
independent of its own produce,
independent of what it produces,
unlike the fate of us women.
Author:
Prerna Bakshi is a sociolinguist, research scholar, writer and translator from Sydney, currently based in Macao. Her work has previously been published in over two dozen journals and magazines, most recently in Grey Sparrow Journal, Silver Birch Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Kabul Press, Misfit Magazine and Peril magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture. Her full-length poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, is forthcoming from Les Éditions du Zaporogue. She tweets at @bprerna.
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***
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3 Responses to “Two Poems”
I loved both the poems. The way you have described Calcutta presents a visual view to the reader . Mahua is short , brilliant and very thought provoking.
Great poems..glimpse of kolkata and greatness of mahua tree like women.. 🙂
Comaring a woman to a tree, right thinking. A source of the fruit of man. Nourishes the world with beauty as a tree dose give food to creatures mankind and fauna. Trees like women are such a muse as well for all art i suspect, men as well.