By Suhit Kelkar

Social distancing

My heels leaving scuff marks in the dust
of the corridor should tell the neighbours

to keep their musical presence away.
It requires no contagion to repel me

from the softness of human voices;
for isn't it a lilt that cuts your throat,

an inflection of voice that guts you whole?
Now I pause in mid-step, my hand on the railing

perilously close to an ant with a flake
of bread that bobs in its jaws as it crawls

back and forth and again on the sour metal
hunting frantically for the trail to its colony

that in somehow slipping away
has turned the world into cold fear.

I could put it out of its misery
were it not for my need to believe

that somehow even an ant can make it
on its own, that someone can,

and that someone might even be me.

The ghost of Manmohan Desai pitches a film

Cue feline violins,
sighs heavy as lead
the summer rain of tears.

Cue conjoined twins, estranged
by rifts of the heart.
Cue dishooms aplenty. Action.

From the womb of twin mothers
(whose mothers were twins)
their destinies welded together

they ripped the gates of birth apart.
Wads of gauze wouldn't staunch the bleeding.
Which back to pat? The midwife didn't know.

Each vying to drown out
the other’s mewling notes
they approached harmony.

Each pushed the other at the nipple
fragile fingers poking kittenish eyes.
When they fought, their pain echoed

twice with a single blow. Flash forward
to one youth salving the other’s welt
the other pouring water on his bruise.

Fuller than whole, more than plenty
their mandala of limbs and vitals
defied definition, slurred symmetry

as they danced for coins in the street
for the sake of their fathers
who jeered with strangers at them.

As they played tug of war
with bonds of flesh
their cries sounded the same.

Each for himself,
they worked scalpels and knives
but the incisions closed

over like ripples in a pond,
they brought pickaxes and crowbars,
couldn't unmake the work of ages.

Their silence turned to acid.
It was then a gash appeared
on the strait of skin that made them one.

It widens day by day, revealing
the net of veins that irrigates them.
Now they avoid each other’s gaze

pooling their strength for a last pull
sharpen their nails, gather
courage for the final

cut. Blockbuster, sir, a 100-crore film.
You will finance?
I will make.

Suhit Kelkar’s poetry has appeared in several Indian and international journals, including Poetry at Sangam (India), Domus India, The Indian Quarterly (India), The Charles River Journal (USA), and Speak (USA), among others. His debut poetry chapbook named The Centaur Chronicles, uses the figure of a centaur to explore themes of exclusion, discrimination and otherness.

Banner image is by Engin Ekyurt. Downloaded from Unsplash.com