ADDICTION
DON’T judge me
standing on yonder shores
when I say I am an addict
this dust that I snorted in
in gallons and gallons
that now flows in my arteries
and still rims my nostrils
will have to sustain
my exhausted limbs
and my weary soul
and the picture in my inner eye
of what I will have once called Home.
*
ARCHIVES
STREETS.
The streets bring home back to me
In vibrant fleeting flashes,
While away from home.
Picture the dendritic river drainage system.
The streets, labyrinthine,
Burnt orange by the setting sun,
Playing peek-a-boo with the residential shadows.
General stores twinkling every two steps
And neighbourhood gossip served in the air.
Widening into the broad roads
Choc-a-bloc with traffic,
Human and non-human alike,
Impatient and snarling
In their frenzied to-and-fro living.
Narrowing into by-lanes and alleys,
The sounds of gully cricket ricocheting,
And the weary rickshaw pullers
Briefly at rest,
Swapping at flies with a worn cloth.
The streets, labyrinthine,
Burnt orange by the setting sun,
Playing peek-a-boo with the residential shadows.
Archiving the homely
Through the familiar.
APALA is an international migrant, queer, female of colour graduate student, earning a PhD in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh in the US. Hailing from India, and from a family of immigrants, Kundu works with postcolonial migration literatures of the Indian Ocean. Besides being an aspiring scholar and an amateur poet of sorts, she is also proud fangirl and fujoshi who loves Indian summers, chai, and mangoes.
