Poetry

By

Nalini Priyadarshni

Food Fantasies in Moral Fabric 

Let there be no ambiguity, for once and for all
What you put on your plate gets
Interwoven tightly with your morality
and at times mortality too
Along with what you don’t put on plate
Pick and eat straight from your garden
Forbidden fruit or Habushu
(Vegan isn’t always the best option)

Make no mistake when you
fast from dawn to dusk
Or eat only Kosher or Sattvic
Pick prime ribs or stick to tandoori chicken
Sauté ganja in butter or bottom up your thandai
Pop golgappa shots without spilling a drop
Or mix your whiskey with cranberry juice

Eternal damnation or everlasting life
Moksha or 72 Houris
Let there be no ambiguity
Your piety depends on what goes down your throat

Homing

Drawn towards your flame

I keep returning at dusk

To blow on your embers

And lose my wings

To their white heat

In moments of lucidity

Between this business of

Living and dying

I untangle the shadows

We slip into, now and then.

Stripped off the flesh we had

Rubbed with sandalwood oil

And washed in rose water

Conundrum of time and distance

Ceases to play on our minds

Riding on ripple rings, we

Let ourselves be blown away

And find our way back

To the home we had never left

The home we had never left

Nalini Priyadarshni

Nalini Priyadarshni is a poet, writer, editor and amateur photographer. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and international anthologies including Up the Staircase Weekly, eFiction India, Mad Swirl, Camel Saloon, Dukool, In flight Magazine Tanka Undertow, Learning & Creativity, Locution Mag, Earl of Plaid, The Yellow Chair. Her forthcoming publications include Sacred Women in the Anti-violence Movement Anthology. She lives in India with her husband and two feisty kids.