By Debasish Mishra
Dear daughter, this is a dark world
Light is a mere plaything
and if you were present here
it’d diffract through the window
and fall on your orange cheeks
like petals of the sun
But darkness is real
How do I define it?
Wherever you go, it’ll follow
in the stares of those shameless eyes
and those hands that grope
the genitals and laugh
and boast their bare brazenness,
seeking medals for their phalluses
You can’t stare back
No, you are not permitted to!
If you dare, you may be
stripped of your wings
or splashed with acid and acrimony
You can’t run to the cops too
Even their uniforms are stained
with sins and semen and blood
Who will help you, my love?
Who will shield you from
the stares and stabs,
the lust and locusts?
How long will I water your seed
with my tears and prayers and hopes?
Stay in the womb forever, I plead
That’s the safest place I know
Or wait till the world becomes an orchard
where you can hop and fly and kiss
the rainbow of your dreams someday
Debasish Mishra, a native of Bhawanipatna, Odisha, India, is the recipient of The Bharat Award for Literature in 2019 and The Reuel International Best Upcoming Poet Prize in 2017. His recent poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Penumbra, trampset, Star*Line, Enchanted Conversation, Spaceports & Spidersilk, and elsewhere. His poems are also forthcoming in The Headlight Review, Space & Time, Bez & Co and Quadrant. A former banker with United Bank of India, he is presently engaged as a Senior Research Fellow at National Institute of Science Education and Research, HBNI, Bhubaneswar, India.
Photo credit: “Father & Daughter” by Dean White via a Creative Commons license.
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