Poetry

Syed Nabil Aljunid photo

By

Prathap Kamath

A kind of nurturing

She goes to the nursery

like a childless woman looking

for abandoned kids in wartime.

The flower plants in pots are orphan kids

with faces of red rose yellow purple . . .

She adopts each one for a different emotion,

motherly, breastmilkleakingingly.

At home in the mornings

she wants to see them well fed,

bathed, combed, cheerful in the breeze

for their school in the sun.

At evenings she suckles and sings

poems and rhymes to them.

Her breasts are shooting stars

on the fall of a summer day.

Occasionally she weeps silently

caressing the leaves of a flowerless rose plant.

Lovers

We meet on our screens

we, the digital lovers.

We had met on a hot day

in my city of dust and smoke

when I had logged into the rendezvous

of cyber citizens –

that bodyless space of sighs and digital orgasms –

after an urban day of indecisions;

and she had stepped into it

from the icy winter

of her continental despair

to tap the snow off her coat

and for a cup of love

from the lonely lean traveller

from some part of the globe.

And there we met on a site

of disembodied love

and were taken to each other

by the coincidence of our hunger.

Her avatar was that of a rearing black stallion

and mine of a grazing white mare;

her avatar was her wish

mine was my yearning;

and this we guessed at first sight.

Ours was love at first chat.

Since then, we have changed

our forms and positions

as frequently as seasons change,

always exchanged the juices

of our mutual love

in numberless phrases,

smileys and emoticons,

each raising the mercury

in our bodily barometers

and each leaving behind in us

scars of digital bites and nail marks.

Prathap Kamath

Prathap Kamath is a poet from India. His published works in English are Ekalavya: a book of poems (2012), Blood Rain and Other Stories (2014) and Tableaux: poems of life and creatures (2017). His poems have been anthologized in The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (Ontario: Hidden Brook Press, 2013), and published in several journals.