Writing from My Neighborhood
Homes are silent:
children no longer play
in the bylanes, picking up
flying frisbees, burying butterflies,
I can smell chickpeas
sautéed in garam masala
from my neighbor's kitchen.
Her quiet daughters have
become quieter.
My mongrel is the one
who has no panic button on.
He sleeps dreaming of his bitch:
she hovers around
my house, sniffing (every corner
where he had pissed) and whining
in love, he darts to the gate,
they sniff-kiss each other, like refugees
from two warring countries:
Home and Street.
When once my mother
was returning from the street to home,
the bitch hid her tail between her legs
slunk in the street-corner with a whine
like the docile daughter-in-law
in the sitcoms that everybody
watches sitting at home
during Corona times.
My father, at seventy five,
sits in a corner,
watching sports highlights,
reading the news on TV
throughout the tone-deaf day,
at times he takes a glimpse
at YouTube videos of
sniff-kissing love
in the time of quarantine.
My boys make hay out of
this quarantine, they mouth it
like a lollipop, they’re socially distant
preferring online games to playgrounds,
malls to seashores,
they build tents out of
their own bubbles.
I have to go out and smell
the sea and feel its filthy frothy
gums sucking on my toes,
I want to break the roof,
let love lorn leaves fall on my
bed, I want to stretch
on the ground branching out
my tendrils with the roots.
I have traveled a long way
from my neighborhood.
Reclaiming
They have come to reclaim:
dolphins kiss the river mouth,
they rub their snouts over
the metal cool rails with
half-closed eyes,
wild geese strut on tarmac-
roads of long-sleeved silence,
otters totter over the eye-brow
prow of a lonely boat,
they're captains of the reclaimed
rivers without shedding a tear.
You too have returned home.
Cooped up in your cell,
you send missives
to your friends and lovers,
I know, you want to
die with your loved ones.
A fresh green shaft sprouts out
of my padlocked past,
I grow roots out of the rust pith,
branch out my arms to shade
my bits of earth
that I reclaimed from you.
Bio: Babitha Marina Justin is a poet, artist and academic from Kerala, South India and a Pushcart Prize nominee, 2018. Her poems have appeared in Eclectica, Esthetic Apostle, Fulcrum, The Scriblerus, Chaleur Magazine, Into the Void, Trampset, Inlandia, The Paragon Press, Adolphus Press, The Punch Magazine, Rise Up Review, Constellations, Cathexis NW Press, Silver Needle Press, About Place Journal, The Write Launch, Trampset, The Four Quarters Magazine, So to Speak Journal, Kritya and Journal of Post-Colonial Literature. Her first collection of poetry, Of Fireflies, Guns and the Hills, was published by the Writers Workshop in 2015. The second collection, I Cook my Own Feast, was published in 2019.