JGeorge’s poems appear or is forthcoming in several online and print journals, most recently in Mookychick, The Initial Journal, Active Muse, TROU Lit Mag, Peach Street Mag, The Martian Chronicles, and FishfoodMag, and the anthologies Boundless (Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival 2019) and Love, As We Know It (Delhi Poetry Slam). She currently lives in Pondicherry, where she is pursuing research at Pondicherry University.
Ambrosia
I walk a mile around the road, just to avoid the rickshaw and cut down expenses.
Ten rupees saved by walk –an offering I always keep for the roadside temple.
I do this almost every day without fail.
My daily pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine on tired legs;
I think of it as a penance for the guilt, for confessing sorrows,
and for sharing toasts.
One can see ideas and debates on living life rising as fumes above that roof –
The roof of the temple, by the corner of 7th Street in Choolaimedu.
Near a Neem tree, so pure, our holy temple stood – a modest tea shop for every commoner.
Nothing less than Ambrosia itself is a Chai flavored with friendship, I say,
lifting the weight of this daily routine at the altar like priest and his chalice.
Isn’t a glass of tea similar to the soothing touch of the oldest therapist working her long fingers on every mind?
Sipping this nectar – Heaven’s drink – down here on Earth.
I dare say, a day gone without Chai is blasphemy.
And I walk a mile around, to cut down expenses,
Now that my offering to the temple is done.
~
Letters
I remember we once agreed to meet every three days
like an international postcard mailed with a stamp pasted on its corner.
Just so, we could avoid the suspicion of evil eyes,
drilling their bore wells on our parched lands.
But you know well what happened as the fireflies flew between us,
Floating, Cupid’s portion glistening on their tiny backs, glowing for our nightly rendezvous,
making it flower, like miniature lanterns flocking;
reminding me of the neelakurinjis of the Shola forest –
purple and blue flowers blossoming once every seven years, phenomenally.
Isn’t that why we went back there each night – to find the swarming dots of light
and dip in the fragrance of wildness – the flowers and the rest?
By the way, those flowers over the climber, covering the tree
with that bench beneath, neatly tucked inside the shade was my favorite. Yours too.
That tree often reminded me of the black hair of an Indian bride bejeweled with white jasmines,
like snowflakes on summer mornings, the blend of warmth and whiteness of those nights;
We always hurried to hide behind her cascade of leaves,
like hungry locusts coming east during the summertime,
before the monsoons could range a battlefield of marshness,
before the land found us sauntering hand in hand,
and before reality dawned on us like the rain showers, unprecedented.