Editor's Note
In Louise Glück’s poem ‘Rainy Morning’, the speaker accuses: ‘You don’t love the world. / If you loved the world you’d have images in your poems.’ Clearly, Aparna Chivukula’s poems don’t have this problem; if anything, they are ripe with imagery.
That being said, it is no easy feat to let an image emerge clearly to the reader. Chivukula achieves this by getting out of the way, by acting as an intermediary. For instance, in her poem ‘At Sunset’, we follow the speaker at the banks of the Tunga where they notice an ordinary stick on the ground which actually turns out to be ‘snake spine, stiffened’ – okay, you think, that’s a bit strange or unique. But that is only the beginning; she zooms in to show us: ‘scales, a column of gold’. When I read this line, it rinsed the grime off my eyes. I could immediately sense a moment of transformation — an ordinary object turning into something extraordinary, even alchemical. But is it alchemy or is it the play of light? Either way, we’re changed with this image.
If having images in your poems equals loving the world, Chivukula’s poems don’t just love the world; they love the world vividly, transforming our very relationship to it.
— Kunjana Parashar
The Bombay Literary Magazine
At Sunset
Crossing the banks of the Tunga,
sheets of white birds fly past
and settle like a cloud
on a tree. I follow. Each step
slowed by sand. Sand in which
there is morning still.
Just beyond, is a stick in the ground.
Has someone marked this territory?
Yes, indeed–
but no stick,
this is snake spine, stiffened,
scales, a column of gold,
sun shimmering on still waters; its hood,
motionless over a frog, who it seems, only hours ago,
fell on her back under the weight of her belly. Laid her eggs,
set the sun;
something is building
in the weather here.
Zooming Into You
I take photos as you pick saplings at the nursery.
When you’re in the air of button roses
no camera concerns you. You emerge, hedge after hedge,
with baby pots, and on your arms,
fresh thorn-scratches.
Have you ever
zoomed into
yourself? I zoom into you all the way home,
frame after frame. Light
and skin overlapping.
Long shadows of your temples drawn over your cheeks:
soft, pockmarked—
Why are you always fiddling with that? you ask.
In some time, today’s pictures will have to be moved out to make room
for new ones. It won’t be easy
finding them after that. Maybe years later you’ll ask,
what was that nursery called again?
Look now,
stained in the light,
you,
cradling a fresh sapling,
in the bed of your crosshatched arm,
and me,
like a wheelbarrow freshly emptied,
carrying the air of old roses.
One Morning We Didn’t Wake Early And
shiver with toothbrushes in our mouths,
walking from sink to room, making sure
we’d got everything. We didn’t put bags
in the trunk and drive along eucalyptus plantations
– suddenly not passing the masala dosa place
I told you about! You didn’t tell me to
stop shrieking. We didn’t get there on time, and
you didn’t lay out rules before we started
walking, which I’ve been doing my whole life.
When we weren’t halfway up, you didn’t offer
me an unsatisfying snack, like a cucumber, unsliced,
bit into like a banana. My hair didn’t
get caught in branches and you didn’t ease
the strands loose wordlessly. You didn’t whistle
the call of any bird I could name, and we didn’t
feel like singing or swinging hands back
and forth. I didn’t know that clouds could
have shadows, and there wasn’t one climbing along
your back. We never got to the top,
where the city lay before us, or didn’t,
where I pointed to a speck and said my future house,
and you pointed, you did, to the same one.
Alone At Home
I have been getting to know my neighbours:
a bald man, foot over knee, reading paper,
a green hoodie running laps on a terrace,
dog, curly-tailed, pacing up and down stairs.
A woman launching clothes over her head
and onto the washing stone.
Then silence.
Another dripping whack of a petticoat. It carries on
as I prepare tea, wipe down counters,
settle a payment. The thick thwack of nighties and pants.
As morning light smokes through
the neighbourhood another day, I sit on the balcony
and look out. No one awake yet but I
scan terraces and rooftops,
looking for the smooth, long-dried stone,
like a baby stretching out arms,
in a marketplace filled with strangers.
Acknowledgments
Image credits: CNSK Murthy
This photograph of the Tunga River was taken by Aparna Chivukula’s father in the 1980s.
Author | APARNA CHIVUKULA
APARNA CHIVUKULA works between Bangalore and Goa. She received the Toto award for poetry, and the Sangam Residency fellowship, in 2023. Her writing has appeared in Poetry at Sangam and Aeon.