Linda Ashok
Linda Ashok has been a guest poet to many literary events in India including The Hindu Lit for Life (Prakriti Foundation, 2014), PEN Prithvi (Mumbai, 2015), The Kala Ghoda Festival of Arts (2016) and others. Her poetry has appeared or forthcoming in various literary journals including the Honest Ulsterman, Friends Journal, The McNeese Review, the Big Bridge Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry and others. She reviews poetry for The Rumpus, Entropy and Stirring – a Sundress Publication. She’s the Founder/President of RædLeaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts, administering the RL Poetry Awards since 2013. Linda tweets at @thebluelimit.
of waters, manners
the waters return home
play with boats, dead sea-men, shells
and when done, they bring back
the toys to where their burial belong
…the way pain returns us our bones
or a gazelle forgives her hunter…
the waters return everything
except time and its own iridescence
Letter to the bunion toed man
a door cut out of fresh morning air/ three poets, a painter, and a hippie gone mellow / In your mind, two boys gathering berries, your twelve-year olds/ a transcriptionist setting dishes out for wash…/ Notwithstanding a few anthills /eavesdropping our silences
“Every time, my hand rose by the side/ the bamboo paused me in bizarre ways/ You stood still at the corner and later, on the beanbag/ with no hunch of attempts”
Two forests meet for a while, sing to each other / exchange birds, chaos, and merge, not forgetting the wood/ they carry back to their idea of homes
We will die in this silence, like the bone / in your toe that never complains, still dying