Poem by Yuyutsu Sharma
I see my world shaking…
I see my world shaking—
my floor, my bed, my table, my house
my pen stumbling across the soggy span of my page
the stanzas splintered from the kicks of a demon
awake after a sleep of million years…
I see my squares mangled from the litter of a wheezing earth
I see top of our towers crumble and topple onto the dried up riverbeds
I see rickety bridges shudder, waters undulating in the turquoise lakes
on the lofty Himalayan heights, a bowl of milk held in the hands of a fearful grandma.
I see dagger of snow crashing onto the mule paths,
salt routes threading through rocky terrains clogged,
the sheets of snow stained from mammoth avalanches
the pinnacles of snow thrust from the earth’s heart tumble
and disappear in a fraction of a second in God’s colossal mouth…
I see domes of our stupas crack,
five colored flags fluttering before Buddha’s own eyes bend and break,
oil lamps lit by Yeti’s hollowed skull dim out
in the sunken canyons of the monks’ wailing eyes…
I see famished angels coming out of snow-clad sanctuaries
like the saffron flames fleeing their kingdoms in exile
I see them come out and lean against the mossy fences
on the threshold of great canyons to ponder over the loss of lives
uttering prayers as the earth cracks open and engulfs
their settlements in front of their own bemused eyes…
I see shrines of our deities shake,
the Lord’s own body cracked into two lifeless boulders,
his mace, his scepter, his lotus,
his conch shell, his brass bowls of nectar,
his splintered quiver full of blunt arrows…
AND WHO WILL BOTHER
by Arturo Mantecón
how tell one from another
another from one
without killing the one
without fating the other
without forking the paths
of the homeward lamb
and the sinful goat
without splintering
the sharp arcs
of the crow
into irrational numbers
it is the mayhem of the word
burning drowning
the soluble body
of the sugar and the salt
the high silk hat
wherein the rabbit disappears
over and over again
to emerge from a sleeve
as a starting bouquet of doves
over and over again
it is to loom the sierpinski carpet
until it lifts up and grazes
the crescent moons
of the inescapable
minarets of baghdad
it is to sweep the dust
of gentile cantors
through those dream
alleys of the souqs
that loll and curl
like ribbons of flesh
like acute angles of smoke
it is to present oneself weeping
and as cock naked
as the humbled jesus
to the cruel gasping laughter
of the stars
