I'm committed to getting my poems into the public domain, but I'm at the moment also pursuing publications in literary journals-- to help the poems find a particular audience-- and they are usually old-fashioned about this sort of thing. A poem on ZEST poets counts as publication and most of them only take unpublished work. So I want to try posting poems a little while after they come into print.
This poem appeared two years ago in Fulcrum 2. --Cheers, Vivek ARROW We have left the company compound, its fence of bound yellowed grass swaying on stilts. Mrs. Young, the manager's wife, is inside with her phonograph for comfort and my mother, in the kitchen, turned to another unpeopled day. Near naked, hairs curled, I'm the villager's favourite. A man takes my hand and laughs: I take in his rows of perfect teeth, red eyes, uncombed hair. He takes my hand: look, something over there. Light broke the canopy of leaves. The arrow was a straight twig rare among the trees. Laughing, he shaved it with a knife large for the purpose, wrists alert, whole seam of his arm to the handle, until it was stripped white and sharpened on one end. Laughing, he cut a groove into the other, still blunt side. So tell, who is this man who takes my hand or draws the loaded bowstring back, who leans against his scissored leg to let the arrow flow? Reader, he's lost to history, as are the sparse and scrubby woods. What's left is the arrow in its unrecorded flight lodged before it has left his hand in the blister bark of that tree and, when you pull away, a small and perfect pink oval. Why does it stay, the smallest thing, that near-human pink splayed like surgery in that black and tan bark? Like the scene of an unsolved crime, sticking regardless to me, waking in this empty room, the sunlight through burglar bars, the linoleum's interlocking design. --Vivek Narayanan ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/yqIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -- You are encouraged to post poetry, respond critically to the poems circulated and participate in discussions. To post, email your message to [email protected] OR post online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/post/ Tell friends to subscribe to ZESTPoets by sending a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if they have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join/ ---theZESTcommunity-------------- [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ --- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
