The Sting in the Tail

By ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTA
Wearing loose clothes, light cottons,
you sit and fan yourself with a newspaper
supplement, a glass of tepid
fennel-flavoured sherbet by your side.

From the window you see
a car turn, a bus pass, or a cyclist,
a towel wrapped round his head.
It’s forty-five degrees centigrade
in the shade, and according to the forecast
there’s worse to come.
A neighbour’s genset
thrums in the background.
At night, still without electricity,
in the sooty warm light of a kerosene lamp,
you read John Ashbery and thwack! That
was a fat mosquito
leaving your forearm.

 

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is the author of four books of peotry; the editor of The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets, Collected Poems in English, by Arun Kolatkar, and A History of Indian Literature in English; and the translator of The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry and Songs of Kabir. A volume of his essays, Parital Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History was published in2012. He lives in Allahabad and Dehra Dun.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 02 here.]

The Sting in the Tail

Related Posts

Image of an orange cupped in a hand

May 2023 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

TIMOTHY DONNELLY
Thorn-blossom! Tender thing, prone to solitude / like yours truly, don’t get it twisted if I reach out my hand— / it isn’t to pluck you, who are my beacon down this path, but a gesture / of acknowledgment common among my kind. / When the lukewarm breezes nod off

Red Lanterns in Night Sky

On Wariness

MYRONN HARDY
There is rhythm on the pavement. / There is rhythm in small / apartment rooms. / I’m over slicing tomatoes. / I’m over drinking wine. / I’m performing as not to be / deformed     as not / to show what I shouldn’t. / I don’t want to feel everything.

Image of two blank canvases on a white wall

Nina and Frida Enter the Chat

FELICE BELLE
these biddies with their deadbolt backs/ take naps / while i construct/ canvas from corset cast / art does not wait until you are well / what they did not understand—the training was classical / chopin, motherfuckers/ carry on like she some backwater bluesy / least common denominator