Three Poems by Tushar Sen
The Last Tree Standing
A lone banyan waits
to be cut down,
until the block officer signs
the contract
to his brother-in-law
in the timber business.
Samples have been collected.
A local student earned his thesis
studying the therapeutic effects
of any/every banyan tree.
His brothers were uprooted
for godowns assembling ORGANIC vegetables
and factories mass-producing HERBAL remedies.
“Too much land locked by trees
that produce nothing except oxygen,”
the fat tycoon said.
So many red-crossed vehicles
passed by the tree,
with bodies feeding on stored oxygen,
waiting to die.
Soil erosion, they claimed,
had been defeated by concrete.
Shade became personal now,
sold as umbrellas.
And the dam they built,
the great hymn to progress—
holds barely enough water
to cool the data center,
built by a foreign company
serving another foreign company.
The Business of Drought
We have never seen the ocean,
but we carry it every day—
on our heads,
in dented metal moons,
in the ache that bends our spines into question marks.
The sky has lost its cotton fields.
The westerlies have blown them away.
It asks the sun to fetch them now.
The sun is working overtime.
The earth is bearing the overheating.
We walk before the sun decides to burn,
feet mapping distances no one will measure,
past a tree that died waiting,
past a well that whispers dust.
Even the fish have learnt of our thirst;
the fish fear we would siphon all the lake—
they refuse to multiply.
Water tankers pass by, teasing the village—
pockets too shallow.
Soda water sells at a discount at the shop,
Morra has no water to freeze for the ice box.
False rain alerts embarrassed
the weather section out of newspapers.
The village priest advises a ritual—
a quintal of rice, a barrel of cooking oil,
a bushel of corn, and a sack of sugar—
to the deity.
Birds have all flown away disloyally,
the lizards that tried to flee
died in empty earthen pots—
decaying outside the village.
The village shylock now lends
not for seeds,
but for water
from the ecoreserve company.
Trees that were uprooted gave way to barren lands,
silenced factories,
cold chimneys,
paper appointments,
future salaries,
future development.
Leaders have decided to plant cactus saplings—
they need no watering.
The wells in the village tremble with fear.
The minister protested
the dam proposal last year:
if electricity is drawn out of the river,
how will the crops survive on hollowed water.
A reporter came last week.
He inquired.
He took notes.
He never returned.
Some say he went missing.
Parched
A bomb fell—
like a rogue kite,
stringless, nameless,
aiming nothing, claiming everything.
Blisters on that body—
like boils on bubble wrap,
waiting, bursting, multiplying.
The place hissed,
like a silenced furnace
breathing through broken walls.
In the market square,
a skull lay atop a fountain,
choked with blood—
to ward off the spirits
of those who died a “natural death.”
Fresh rubble,
still warm,
drew hands the way gold does.
Not mourners, collectors.
They came softly,
like it was a harvest.
Shoes were eased
from the feet of the buried
without asking for permission.
Gemstones pinched
from fingers gone cold.
Piggy banks split open—
their small treasures
up for grabs.
Business as usual—
no one took notice,
no one complained.
Barrows carried bodies—
unclaimed,
hurried to a deep patch of earth
dug out to accommodate them all.
Ambulances stood in the heat,
with hospitals gone,
medical aid
traded by the roadside.
The city now heard
only sirens,
craving baby cries.
A stray rocket stuck on a rooftop—
ashamed of its own sterility,
hiding its nose from passersby
who pelted rage-filled stones.
Nadine, seen every noon,
bowl in small hands,
waiting for rice
in a line longer
than her eyes could hold.
Tushar Sen is a finance professional from Bhoiwada village in Maharashtra, India. He also engages in sustained creative and scholarly writing. He is the author of Pandora’s Box, a collection of short stories available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Audible. In 2020, he wrote and produced the short film Zulfi, which screened internationally and received 22 laurels across film festivals. He was recently selected for LADAKH—Closer to the moon Residency Program for writers.
His poetry has appeared in Sortes, Lekh, Indian Review, Writers Resist, SpecPo Verse, Flora Fiction, Ecological Citizen, Military Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal and Afrocritik.
Photo credit: Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash.
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THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE INCREDIBLE SUPPORT AND VISITS TO THIS PAGE! YOUR PROFOUND REFLECTIONS, INSIGHTS, AND PUSHCART WISHES MEAN THE WORLD TO ME. I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL TO EVERYONE ENGAGING WITH THIS SPACE OF CREATIVE RESISTANCE!
Huge congratulations on getting your beautiful poetry published in Writers Resist! Seeing your hard work and incredible talent recognized on such a wonderful platform is a true joy, and I could not be happier for your well-deserved success. May this milestone be just the beginning of many more achievements, awards, and open doors in your writing journey. God bless you abundantly, and may He continue to inspire your mind and bless your creative hands as you share your powerful voice with the world!
I am absolutely thrilled to see your three incredible poems selected by Writers Resist! As a huge fan, I just want to say that I love you and your art; the way you capture the cold cruelty of modern environmental indifference with such delicious, razor-sharp sarcasm is pure genius. Wishing you immense future success and a well-deserved Pushcart Prize nomination for this brilliant work. Amen! ❤
It is thrilling to see your incredible work selected by Writers Resist! As a huge fan, I love how powerfully this trio of poems reflects the cold, systemic cruelty of modern environmental indifference. The subtle, biting sarcasm you weave throughout the imagery—like uprooting century-old banyans just to mass-produce corporate “organic” remedies—is absolutely delicious and cuts right to the bone. You wrap deep, devastating truths in such clever, razor-sharp irony, making this brilliant selection so incredibly well-deserved!
Huge congratulations to Tushar on having these three incredible poems selected by Writers Resist! As a big fan of his work, it is deeply gratifying to see his unique voice recognized on such an impactful platform. This trio of poems perfectly showcases his talent for blending sharp, visceral imagery with a powerful critique of climate crisis, capitalistic greed, and human survival. Each piece carries an intense emotional weight that stays with you, making this selection a well-deserved milestone for his creative resistance.
I am so happy to read Tushar on Writers Resist, congratulations! I particularly love “The Business of Drought” because it hits with such an intimate, devastating emotional punch. Instead of treating the climate crisis as a distant headline, Sen makes you feel the literal weight of it—the way water scarcity warps a community’s reality until their very “spines bend into question marks”. What makes this specific poem so brilliant is how it unmasks the cruel irony of disaster capitalism, showing us a world where local shylocks lend money for water rather than seeds, and politicians casually substitute cactus saplings for real systemic solutions. When he writes about a well that “whispers dust” or fish that “refuse to multiply” out of fear, he breathes a heartbreaking, tragic life into the landscape itself. It is a beautiful, necessary piece of creative resistance that lingers with you long after the final line.
In “Parched,” Tushar delivers his most harrowing critique of human desolation, masterfully capturing how the visceral trauma of war rapidly mutates into a cold, transactional reality. The poem’s brilliance lies in its refusal to romanticize grief; instead, it exposes a grim world where survival instincts completely strip away traditional morality, turning the living into hurried “collectors” who quietly strip gemstones and shoes from the newly buried. Sen’s imagery is unforgettable and deeply haunting—whether he is describing a stray rocket hiding its nose in shame or a ruined city so starved of life that its ears crave the simple, ordinary sound of a baby’s cry. By ending on the heartbreaking image of young Nadine waiting in a food line longer than her eyes can hold, the poem anchors the vast devastation of geopolitical conflict into a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of innocence suspended in ruin.
Tushar’s poetic voice stands out for its fiercely visceral and uncompromising language, transforming the heavy burdens of environmental ruin and social decay into striking visual art. He expertly juxtaposes the grand machinery of global capitalism with the fragile intimately human details of survival—contrasting foreign-owned data centers with the parched throats of a dying village, and falling bombs with the quiet, desperate theft of shoes from the newly buried. This deliberate friction between corporate sterile expansion and raw human suffering gives the collection a gripping, urgent rhythm. By capturing a world where even the birds and fish seem to flee from human desperation, Sen does more than just document tragedy; he creates an unforgettable, haunting space where nature and humanity weep for the exact same losses.
What makes Sen’s collection so deeply arresting is his ability to blend quiet, localized tragedies with a sweeping critique of global systems, transforming statistics about climate change and warfare into intimate human heartaches. By breathing a tragic consciousness into the landscape—where a lone banyan tree waits for its corporate execution sentence and a well literally “whispers dust”—the poet forces us to witness a world losing its vital spark to artificial concrete and transactional greed
His lines move with a heavy, rhythmic grace, effortlessly shifting focus from the grand absurdities of political false promises to the quiet, heartbreaking image of a young girl standing in an endless food line. Ultimately, this suite of poems succeeds because it refuses to turn away from discomfort; instead, it demands accountability, leaving readers deeply shaken yet profoundly moved by the sheer emotional weight and lyrical precision of his resistance.
Sen’s remarkable trio of poems achieves a profound, devastating brilliance by exposing the raw nerve endings of human greed, environmental collapse, and the cold mechanics of survival. In
“The Last Tree Standing,” Sen masterfully wields sharp irony to expose the hypocrisy of modern “progress,” where living ecosystems are callously commodified into corporate, sterile versions of wellness. He carries this haunting atmosphere seamlessly into “The Business of Drought,” grounding global climate ruin in the agonizing, physical reality of a village where spines bend into “question marks” and water scarcity is brutally weaponised as a financial trap. Finally, “Parched” delivers a devastating, visceral climax, capturing the bleak aftermath of violence where normal human grief is completely swallowed by desperate survival, leaving behind a city craving nothing more than the simple hope of a baby’s cry. Together, these poems stand as a deeply moving, urgent testament to creative resistance, pairing breathtakingly evocative imagery with an uncompromising moral clarity.