Poetry: tug of war between whisper and rumor by Karan Kapoor
Strung through with the tension invoked by its title, Karan Kapoor’s poem invites us into the complexities of a relationship ridden with bitterness and the wear and tear of years. Through a form which winds unpunctuated like a long road, we are asked to glimpse the griefs of each of the speaker’s parents.
tug of war between whisper and rumor
Is there pain inherent in loving
two who do not love each other?
— T. Fleischmann
two decades of marriage
two decades each of them mourning
he or she is the suffering party
my father’s skull a city
he does not wish to visit
his skin an atlas of fear
he is too tired of tracing
he cracks two eggs at sunrise
packs idealism for lunch
chews nothing for dinner
he sleeps in a river
labors in a desert
she scorns in a snakepit
absolves on a stage
she walked out how
many times to return
each time a new name
for the shadows
on her face
she nursed me with the slowdrip
of sorrow known only to women
who scrape pieces of themselves
like earth from onions
my father does not own
a spoon so he built a staircase
that enters the earth
he says this is exile
longing for what you are
always beneath
she calls this doubt
numb to the naked
road ahead
children are stones in our bowls
Karan Kapoor
Karan Kapoor is a poet. They have been awarded or placed for James Hearst Poetry Prize, Rattle Annual Prize, Ledbury Poetry Prize, Julia Darling Memorial Prize, Red Wheelbarrow Prize, John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry, Orison Anthology Award, and Literary Taxidermy Competition. Their manuscript Portrait of the Alcoholic as a Father was a semi-finalist for the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Poetry Online, Colorado Review, Prism Review, The Offing, Frontier, and elsewhere. You can find them at: karankapoor.co.in
