by Shikhandin
Beyond my miniature herb garden on the sill,
at ease and out of reach of all
commonalities,
my dutiful day tick-tocks. Details
with excruciating precision
what I seek each day
to diligently gloss over.
An old man in a pair of khaki shorts,
newspaper rolled beneath an arm,
another holding a plastic bag, urinating
against the “No Nuisance Please”
sign of a compound wall;
a stout garden lizard’s splotched dodge
in the path of a school boy’s determined
bicycle; two united mongrels fox-trotting –
now on the concrete, now among the long
grass and garbage; and
an abandoned old woman lying dead
right there among the lot,
a bottle on its belly draining
away beside her, with rigor mortis
already set in; nothing special.
No, nothing special. This is
just me and my diligently
indifferent day clocking,
ticking-tocking all
the details within details of a world
rolling on, endlessly ahead,
searching for everything
and finding naught, on
its inexhaustible,
incomprehensible
wheels.
Erstwhile ad person, Shikhandin has been widely published in all five continents. In 2012 she won the first prize for her flash fiction in the Anam Cara Writer’s Retreat Short Story Contest. Lifi Publications India is publishing her novel “Culling Mynahs and Crows” and a book of her short stories “The Vanishing man and Other Imperfect men” in 2013. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006 and also a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest. Her poem in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal was nominated for a Pushcart (2011) and also for the Best of Net Anthology. One of her stories – “Ahalya’s Valhalla”- was among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award (USA). She has been featured in an exclusive anthology edited by Jayanta Mahapatra. She guest-edited the April 2013 issue of The Four Quarters Magazine.
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