Two Poems by Dr. Sambhu R

 

Gooseberries



“Ours, too, a transitional species,

chimerical, passing…”—Jane Hirshfield



The zinnias and pansies in our garden
wake as if from a nocturnal fever,
petals sequinned with sudorific excess
and leaves in sticky amplectic poses;
the thermometer of sunlight comes slanting in;
a barbet conjures worms out of a tree hollow.
You stand under the bulbous canopy
of gooseberries, cupping the soft swell of flesh
beneath the waistline, and inspect the stretch marks
on their pale green, almost pellucid skin gleaming
as if to ask What is the tensile strength of love?
My nails are lined with dirt
from pressing a marigold seedling
into the moist soil. It is astonishing how
the earth resolves in an instant the conundrum—
home or graveyard? —with the same yielding gesture.
Four swallowtails dance a cotillion
around the hem of your floral frock.
Priapic mushrooms scrunch under my feet
like lizard shells. I have visions in which
I am an ichthyosaur navigating
a calm sea aglow with dinoflagellates.
Tapping the conch-like projections on my ear
you would say, Cochlea is Latin for seashell.
If there is no part of us that is not
borrowed from those who came before us,
are we really us? Your canines draw
the bitter juice out of a gooseberry.
At this stage, our baby can already sample tastes.
Sweet is not always good or bitter bad.
We do not want you, dear, to take an obscene pride
in your human name, hands, hunger, skin, heart.
When you founder and sink to the bottom
of your delusions, may gills open around your neck
and elliptical wings carry you over yourself.

 

 

 

Father’s Shaving Razor

 

Even after my father died,

his double-edged razor

remained on the window sill,

mottled with sunlight in a chiaroscuro

of remembrance and cunning neglect.

 

I took it up one evening

when its silent presence

had almost turned it into a monument

and ran a filial finger

over its chrome-plated, micro-engraved handle.

 

It smelled faintly of Old Spice

and somewhere there was a whiff of cigarette smoke.

Between the brackets was the blade

with little acid burns of rust near the edges,

and a fine drizzle of grey stubble—

 

more like bread mold—

from when my father

shaved for the last time,

fell into my palm as I took

the protective mechanism apart.

 

It is said that hair and nail

continue to grow

for some time after you are dead;

perhaps that is the only afterlife there is—

the redemptive grace of keratin.

 

The razor still rests

on the window sill—

cold, immobile—

holding its sharpness in reserve

for the day my beard will finally come off.

Dr. Sambhu R is a bilingual poet from Kerala. He is employed as Assistant Professor of English at N.S.S. College, Pandalam. His poems in English have appeared in Wild Court, Bombay Literary Journal, Muse India, Borderless Journal, Setu and Shot Glass Journal, among others.