ISSUE FIVE: July, 2020

A FARM FRUIT NAMED DHARMA

by ADITYA SHANKAR

If I am reborn as a myth, I’d be a farm fruit named Dharma. On a detached morning, I would still bloom into the fingerprints of fog and peer pressure, reading the earth as a complex theorem of demand and supply. My stillness in an orchard isn’t what a poet thinks it is, but a power nap before being productive. My eyes, a window that remains closed, though it wishes to float down the babbling brook and trifle with kingfishers. With my aroma and silkiness, I lure the hands of the fruit picker. I vie for that elusive spot in her basket. I wave goodbye to mother-plant from a truck and fade away into the dream of glossy urban fruit racks. For you, I resist the love bytes of the fly, the melodrama of redness, the ecstasy of ageing. The prospects of sprouting in a gutter or attaining nirvana in the gut of a stray goat, left unexplored. I, Dharma, look forward to being sorted, packed, ordered and delivered. When an online grocery store displays: Sorry, this item is out of stock, a fraction of your grief becomes the pride of my soul.

ADITYA SHANKAR is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominated Indian poet, flash fiction author and translator. His poems have appeared in reputed journals from twenty five or more nations and translated into Malayalam and Arabic. Books: After Seeing (2006), Party Poopers (2014), and XXL. He lives in Bangalore, India.