Two Poems by Malavika

malavika-dinner

(1)

All of a sudden her mother started to

Smell like an onion

She rolled her chapattis

Like a de-constructivist scholar

 

Next day her father came to smell

Like a tomato

He churned the pickles

Like a Marxist-reader

 

“Did you get what I was talking about?”

“No?” It doesn’t matter

This is exactly how our plates

Clamour the rhetoric of their dinner

 

 

colonial-anthropologist-malavika

(2)

Monkeys who aberrated

 

Their tails down the

Rails of my window

They feed on two drops

of antique honey and a piece of rusted bread

 

They spat old

They munch and stare into my room

Licking the side panes.

Let me tell you

They are my colonial anthropologists

 

Illustrations by Ashraya