Modi’s Shravan

Parvees tells me
the real pilgrims walked
        yesterday–

a mobile sound-system
plays filmy music
it knocks off
        the wing mirror
of the car in front

–Parvees shakes
his head muttering
about bad men and ganja
beating up
        those who complain
in their ‘celebration’ of Lord Shiva:

The truck
they’re falling
        out of carries
them off like
corpuscles on a palanquin.

Meditating on R. Radhakrishnan

I am pulling apart the scar of migration
I am biting through my skin
You call it molasses; I call it anguish
Name a road after the diasporic postcolonial melancholia
Name a town after this disorientation
Call me a three-wheeler / Give me nine lives
Punch me in the chest or kiss my neck
Let’s go to Lodhi Gardens you can chew my wrist
Call me the city and cough me up later over khan cha-chas.

 
Azad Ashim Sharma is the director of the87press. Azad’s first collection of poetry, ‘Against the Frame,’ was published by Barque Press (2017). His poems have been published by Tripwire, Pratik, amberflora, Datableed, Poetry Wales, and Erotoplasty. He lives and works in London.