Abandoned Music by JYOTHSNAPHANIJA Every evening that house sings in suffocation. They welcome the night with worships. Their memory is a big city to relocate hundreds of scales and intricate rhythm combinations. They have a tempo meter. The wind heavy with that chanting reaches the garden, Hits his tumbler filled with water for the plants, Compels him to pick up some lines, Some difficult words, and some more notes. For some years, his learning reaches the peak. He thinks of revealing their skills and get applause, But the day before, he gets a violent dream. His voice becomes stone-hard when he wanted to talk with his wife. He couldn’t move any scale, he loses the beat meter in the backyard of his home. The terrific part of his dream is, All the difficult words he learnt, Dissolve in his chicken soup. He could never know that the dreams Are planted successfully by the house, Who has the key of it, And can shut his voice forever By constructing shackles of endless myths, Fears and differences, Echo in the lyrics “You, the unclean”, Script the complexity of simplest words. Sayori by JYOTHSNAPHANIJA The evening wind schlepps Sayori’s dreams, Sings happiness. In her festive presence, When the glittering women focus their eyes, She blushes like melting seasand. The seashore roar chants blessings. The redwind wears colours for her. Everything appears only for her when she changes her hut. Sayori, whose colour was taken by the salt air, Whose voice was echoed in the seashells murmur, Now shines like a pearl, In her bridal life, cheerful and positive. Her primary words, Were erased on the ground beneath her feat. Her watery eyes, Saw sunshine and dark noise, Only when the sea showed. The glittering pearls start losing their colour, She unveils her innocence, Soon she starts imitating the other tired women, She even imitates the way of their waiting. When the Radio is silent, But the sea is red, Her only hope sails to bring life for her, And for her unborn son. She waits for long, Talks with women who can interpret signs, Cajoles herself for a while and again mused over the doldrums. The lonely nights, Sayori cooks, The rice before the son can actually wake, Near the banks of the sea, Waits for the boats, When they come she stands with hope and searches, She doesn’t cry as the tears may blur her sight. Hurls the sushi sweet stuff In to the sea with anger. Repeats this every day. Her eyes ooze When the glittering women confess, “Sea killed your father, your husband, And it’s not sea but you, The unlucky girl. Unlucky girl being cursed by the sea Goddess, Came to our family like a hungry fish”, “Let she be starved, the curse would fade” She prays for ours and ours, That her son shouldn’t be afflicted by her curse. Years and years, She offers herself to the Goddess. Sayori’s bridal dreams, elapsed and offered To the young seagirls eyes, To repeat the tales, To relive her life, As it was the life That was lived by many other women, Which the sea has swallowed before the earth can actually hear. The Flute Woman by JYOTHSNAPHANIJA The trickling dew between the leaves, in the tacit morning storm, The twilight windwood tunes, when she walks over the river, Singing with her flute when the river adjusts the rhythm, She fills the sorrows with forgetting, Wherever she sells, When her glass bangles sharpen the pitch Of that fluctuating flow, every morning and every evening, The other times too, she burns in wind. The sensitive tunes of the bamboo flute, The delicate facets of her bamboo life, The falling music and her starving hunger, For the others, the sweet honey feast. The folded hands shivering, The flute she plays in the solitude, The wind enticed, with the finger technique perfection, The halted breeze,, the raining clouds, The speaking thunder, the wordless river, The gazing eyes, at her breath, When the beads of her shell necklace were blazing, The peacock feathers in her hair betrayed, Feelings unreturned, Opening and closing the eight-holed flute when her eyes Are blinking with the charcoal fume, Cutting the woods, shielding from harm, When her life, brittle and empty, Carrying the snatches of old tunes, saving from the fracture, Of the cruel shadows of those winter hues of wet sand, From those sweet coloured sandal wind, The days growing shorter, She counts on all her notations. Fragile as her flute, She conceals her tears in melting the rocks. Compressing her desires, She preserves her breath for the another life. Jyothsnaphanija is a PhD research scholar in English Literature at EFL University, Hyderabad, India. Her poetry has appeared in Melusine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Coldnoon, Luvah, Kritya, just to name a few. Her short storey has appeared in eFiction India. Her research articles have appeared in Subalternspeak, eDhvani, Wizcraft, Barnolipi and in several books. Currently she is on the editorial team of The Criterion, fiction editor for Miracle. Editorial Note: (Please Read Closely Before Submitting) Poets Basement is now on Facebook. Find us as http://www.facebook.com/poets.basement. To submit to Poets Basement, send an e-mail to CounterPunch’s poetry editor, Marc Beaudin at counterpunchpoetry@gmail.com with your name, the titles being submitted, and your website url or e-mail address (if you’d like this to appear with your work). Also indicate whether or not your poems have been previously published and where. 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