Vishu¹: Our New Year
I hawked for
yellow flowers on the streets,
felt their crisp, moist petals,
bought a bunch when the market
erupted with bargains.
My ears tingled with
a yellowness—insisting
on toting a culture;
I lit flickering flames of
the brass lamp which shone
with the twang of tamarind, and vinegar;
I blindfolded my children,
walked them through
the dark alleys of a sore
sleepy morning, to display
the opulence of a New Year.
The lunisolar days
walked close to me
tip-toeing with the shadows
I hid within my body vase—
flowers, music, a piece of you—
I watched them slowly wither.
On my godless dining table
gourds burst, mangoes
stared tardy, raw cashew
fruits turned back their
spotted cheeky rear;
a few coins gleamed,
my mother’s antique gold
lost its lustre, became darker.
The yellow flowers were
soft and dry by now, I peered
into the Aranmula mirror²
crowfeet vined up my skin,
wrinkles erupted from
primordial cells; somewhere far away
they captured a black hole,
that looked like a wilting
flower on the metal mirror.
_______________________________________________
¹Vishu is a festival celebrated as the New Year in one of the Indian states, Kerala.
²Aranmula mirror is a handmade metal-alloy mirror, made in Aranmula, a small town in Kerala, India.
Babitha Marina Justin is from Kerala, South India and a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poems have appeared in Eclectica, Esthetic Apostle, Fulcrum, The Scriblerus, Chaleur Magazine, Into the Void, Trampset, Inlandia, The Paragon Press, Adolphus Press, The Punch Magazine, Rise Up Review, Constellations, Cathexis NW Press, Silver Needle Press, About Place Journal, The Write Launch, Ogazine, The Four Quarters Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, Kritya, and Journal of Post-Colonial Literature. Her first collection of poetry, “Of Fireflies, Guns and the Hills,” was published by the Writers Workshop in 2015. She is also waiting to debut as a novelist with Maria’s Swamp: The Bigness of Small Lies.