I: The Reviewers Revenge
For Som

Scabs linger long in act of remembering incarceration
Acts physic being thrown flung sack back of steel tray
Sobs take the place of warm hand on back at cremation
Wilted passage in revenge as bad grammar now in play
A paperback proclaims own bookend butt of SLR gun
Slurs slapped till palm is hot incessant frothed memory
Dialogues steel into a finger of a prison bar recalls bard
Thrown for bad poetry sinning spinning of head on hard
Concrete where water seeps into a shroud of wan Christ
Laughter shakes shrieks a watery pot of milk somewhere
Curdles at empty tin sound as corporal salutes a sentry
Two weeks pass before someone notices a pot of yogurt
Flings it out in cement drain as reviewer winces in pain. 

II: A Physics Notebook.
For Anirudh

Green stripes not to be laughed at not meshed with red
Clashed plastic palettes in a mess cream with potatoes
Astral instance of sock mask pulled on wine and bread
Aluminum jug of milky tea penance for chanting Moses
Prayers crashing at mahogany arms and leg iron footed
Boots in roots of rainforest giants welt purple on neck
A pause, signal, remember words from Israeli manual
Red book slapped on face worse than trammeling fists
Fits impressions of knuckles on legs, face, arms, torso
Move…migrate…move…move…toso…toso.toso…io
Dawn breaks dawn in fetid skinned eye a mangled man
No bloodless coup this, sets watch align march encamp.

III: The Actor in Him
A farmer does not uproot easily but now shook by hair
Watching wife dragged by ankle slips neck onto knife
Attendant hands disengage distended throat from blade
A whispered punishment in the muddy paddy of delta
Death does not come easily many deaths come too easy
Each embrace a prayer an arm stretched for rope plastic
Cups for sugar weed cocktail quart is more than needed
Hands shake a weak nerve unquiet in the night deserts
Mind eye heart in one insistent shiver surrenders place
Drinks weak tea at trestle in a grove of rain tree tents
Dead gaze meets metal glints of camera lens shutting
Follows silent images on film rolling bats away a flea
From corner of dead cornea remembers the new script
Is a natural drags away now method actor in own right.

IV: Wedding Bus Ride

No vows were taken or given in that shadowed dawn
Single Indian file slow gait of goat trodden pathway
Blue bus with yellow streaks sketched but now drawn
Quartered like wagon circle with cargo on a highway
Forced playing of flute and drum the sohar still shrill
No checkpoint ad hoc roadblock of warm cane knives
The singer chokes on tears pulls out pathos in her trill
Bus driver familiar here pulls on broad grin and drives
The roadblock disappears two men imitate the singing
Strong choir voices until clown appears cross-dressed
Welled laughter recoils at crass groping in the dancing
Wedding song common for men cutting cane amassed

Mohit Prasad