Two poems by Amit Parmessur

Female Forms

I feel so awkward and forlorn in this city,
like a star in the midst of condescending bulbs

Where I stay is a place decorated by slavery
Through the wooden window of my modest room
I see a tree trunk resembling a naked woman
holding a hundred branches and thousand twigs,
which are always waltzing proudly,
relishing security, oblivious of the woman’s perpetual pain
I’m ashamed to admit that I’m so desperate
that I even get ideas looking at the naked woman

When I go to work each dewy morning
I see that enormous rock, with vivid cornflowers
leaning against it, near the elegant bus stop
It’s like a crouched woman, one who has just been
beaten black and blue by a drunk husband
As I go away in the bus I cannot stop looking at her,
praying for more tolerance and sensibility.

When I decide to spend my evening under the bridge
looking at the blissful swans transporting their
joyous bodies from one corner of the river to another
I feel your presence in the rhythmic ripples
I feel your rustic face like
a flower blossoming in my thirsty hands

And at night, along the ceiling there is always
that woman carrying a heavy basket on her head
A rare friend once told me my ceiling is a canvas
paying tribute to slavery

Why couldn’t we be as rhyming swans in a river
Why couldn’t we be carefree twigs

I have bought some paint but it would be sad
to erase that woman who reminds me of you,
back in some faraway village

====================

A Prince from the Gutter

just like fragrant flowers flourish from
odorless buds she too has become
a pure princess from a plain child,
with a seductive silhouette bettering
the curves of the most well-formed petals
in any flower-crazy lady’s grand garden

I know princesses love men from the gutter
better than those from pompous palaces
I know they love men who have a rough beard,
not those with an ornamental
and well-trimmed sissy family mustache,
having to walk with the help of their horse’s legs

I can’t call myself jobless when I adore her,
worshipping her more than a couple of daily hours
without waiting for any wondrous blessings

I won’t call ourselves unlucky when she
cares for me too the year round,
cursing vehemently her palace walls as rapists
and bullish disloyal brats who can reveal
her inner heart to anyone, any time

but you know kings are the vile villains
in the most colorful fairy tales

I’ll plot cunningly against her shrewd father

she’ll sacrifice as a flower that leaves
the doomed stem for the ambitious vase, for a
nectar-dripping vase made from the marrow of real life

and of course, she never stops
praising the walls and roof of my charming hut, so

Author bio:

Aged 27, Amit Parmessur hails from the beautiful paradise-like island of Mauritius. Despite the limited opportunities in his country he has kept on going and has appeared and been accepted in several magazines like SHALLA’s Magazine, Carcinogenic Poetry, Catapult to Mars, Eunoia Review, Puffin Circus, Ann Arbor Review, Damazine, Burnt Bridge and Heavy Hands Ink among others. Feeling very close to the land of his ancestors, India, he also loves and speaks Creole, Bhojpuri, French and Hindi.