I used to love the roads
as well as blood loves vein
fleeing from
running to
the geographies of other maps
where my race
charted like a cartographer’s
fantasy

finds itself obscured
by the deviance of our desire

in all my darkness
i have never lost the way
nor forgotten the words of
this lamentation

Global Warning

A motorcycle revs up the evening
somewhere a man forces himself
between a child’s legs
A silk-clad woman drinks her solitude
into stupor
A father afraid
of hungry tomorrows
breaks through a picket line
Dishonour is painful
and carries a thousand names.

Both poems copyright Kaushalya Bannerji 2019