Small Talk Poem by Satish Verma

Surge in hidden chastity
enters the torch but the enemy
was within.

Brown clouds over the black carbon,
glaciers were melting;
the assault rifle stands alone in snow.

This was not ignorance,
a purposeful denial of white truce
in the jungle of lizards.

I would go where nobody wants
to tread in night. The hanging years
of marriage gone wrong.

O my God, tiger at the door,
demanding a new babe every moon.
The flesh will extract its own blood.


Satish Verma