kala ramesh the unseen arc - snapshot press
TRANSCRIPT
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 bySnapshot Press, Orchard House, High Lane, Ormskirk L40 7SL
at www.snapshotpress.co.uk/ebooks.htm
Copyright © Kala Ramesh 2017
All rights reserved. This eBook may be downloaded for the reader’s personal use only. It may not be sold, copied, or circulated in any other way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Further, no part of this eBook may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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The right of Kala Ramesh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Typeset in 16/20 pt and 12/15 pt Adobe Caslon Pro
Cover photograph © Bhavani Ramesh
Design by John Barlow
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AcknowledgementsThanks are due to the editors and publishers of the following publications in which many of these poems previously appeared:Eucalypt, A Hundred Gourds, Modern English Tanka, Notes from the Gean, Ribbons, Simply Haiku, Streetlights: Poetry of Urban Life (Modern English Tanka Press, 2009), and Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 3 (Modern English Tanka Press, 2010).
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the unseen arc
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as father prays circling the sacred basil we imitate placing our tiny feet against his wet footprints
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a sudden spurt of warm feeling . . . my blood from a womb
I knew nothing about
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in the hands of an ordinary craftsman the cotton loom becomes the beautiful khadi
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mother laments being old and bent I see her as a curved branch laden with fruit
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the word kal in Hindi means both what’s to come and what’s gone . . . like wearing my six-yard sari
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a visit to our childhood home I feel stripped when those old trees see me without my dreams
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the city hung with Diwali lamps a whore swings her curves from left to right
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I find ways to cushion the walls of my mind . . . else the shock of thoughts would echo for days
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a woman to woman talk exposing all . . . I hold back the one thing that hurts me most
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barefooted I stand before god my slippers outside the temple gate along with my ego
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if I could let go of everything I cherish the winds would surely carry me away like a feather
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just when I think where I am is nowhere the cranes once again colour the sky
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a palmist predicts bad days ahead I offer the other saying, no two hands are ever quite the same
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the night all to myself I imagine the unseen arc of the crescent moon
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