Three Poems by Nuzhat Amin Mannan

artwork by amina

Beating the 'are there anymore poems left in me?' blues

The prevention is:
To stay clear of people
Who say they love
Poems you wrote thirty years ago…
The cure:
To believe
Poetry is not an act
But an excuse…

The Garden

My foot crushed a snail as big as
My palm
In the garden
Last night.
My grief was as violent as the poor thing's spasm…
But
'It wasn't meant to be there'…
We were ruefully accusing each other.

Dream traffic

It is the usual street drama:

Of my jittery dreams
Honking, screeching,
Slamming pedals, inching to get ahead.
The vintage one about imminent death in the family
and the tan minicab: of some promise forgotten,
The dented blue one: global warming
and the covered truck conveying something nostalgic
The red one: walking across a slippery wall,
the motorcycle of phantoms leering,
The BMW: VIP guests coming and the kitchen exploding,
Stream of rickshaws: dead ancestors sleeping on your sofa...
Somehow the clog melts and all that is left of the chaos
is the way the morning looks after being caught in a dream traffic.

Nuzhat Amin Mannan, of English department, Dhaka University, is presently residing in Morocco.