Abhiram Kuchibhotla is from Delhi, India. A humanities graduate who currently manages communications and media for the Agri-Entrepreneur Growth Foundation (AEGF), he writes short stories and poems drawn from the web of Indian society. His work can be found at The Remnant Archive, Doing Sociology, RIC Journal, Chaicopy, and in the IWP anthology Exodus.
pātralu
search for ‘utensils in Telugu’
and swap languages—yes, with
the arrows in the middle of the two
once done, realize, o learned one
it is not about explicit refusal
but the implicit glance of the privileged
the ones that let you know what you’re there for
and what is a feedback loop
if not the culmination of the past in the present
patterns reemerging, preying on each other
my mother arranging the utensils before bed
father lying in the sofa, phone held above his head
solastalgic
in a twilight punctuated by the lights of tweets and stories
desperate for someone to listen
bronchioles banning breath
breathe - but by bought bottles
before the c-virus, ‘19 edition
Iron Lungs wrapped polio-ridden
barely enough metal to shield us
barely enough to contain all the oxygen
in ’21 skins hide grey bones
is light diffracted through windows
blight?
if I go to kumbh, the good pilgrim
mu-cor-mycosis decide on a whim
gouge, blind my eyes,
do the seraphim welcome me as lights dim?
but illumination comes from
flares glinting off tiny phials
torches on roads and bylanes
find migrants with pinched veins
little neon green number guards
assuring life in clinical wards.
the knowledge we have gained
started with stones and sparks
and when those that are
supposed to provide
fail us
we see the ouroboros
poem scribbled behind my rolling tray
today I smoked a cigarette in the drain fly infested
bathroom of my hostel room, me, the neatest person
while narrating how I murdered the flies
a performative warning to their comrades
is the erratic addled skid of a bicycle on a downhill pavement not always,
really, not always more powerful than Shakespeare’s 7 stages of life?
isn’t the word rrqwzox a much more mysterious poem than the road not taken?
what is a road not taken? what have you gleaned from it?
be content with the leafy road you’re speeding on. look at it. look at rrqwzox.
is nothing more destructive than calling the wrong girl
the righter’s name on a glance at the road footpath?
me singing “whooo’s a buttery boi” in a loop while high cycling
to the tune of the Bob the Builder theme
will be sui generis to mere music, no matter how cosmonautical.
isn’t all experience/adrenaline/a good memory in
blatant violation of our natural survival laws ingrained into every DNA strand
haiku
1. no more problems
whence i prove women
drag to mine profane level
we will be equal
2. creases
paper planes made good
twist away from windows soon
alas, such is life
3. (no title)
i die atheist
what if heaven hell exist
the funny thing is