Thursday 31 August 2023

Tephra, 2019, 1943

A pebble hits and smashes 
my morning mirror.
Now I am cold as a stone, 
stand so remote,
before the household’s
four-oven fire
peering at the glow, imagining —

what a strange block of coal 
my great-grandmother poked
out from the belly of the earth 
in forty-three’s summer.

Instead of being dour,
she carried the flaming charcoal home
to cook for her boys 
burnt taro roots.


(The poem was first published in the May 2023 issue of Poetry India: https://www.ethosliterary.org/poetry-india/may-2023-issue/poems-by-arun-paria)

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