By: Jose Varghese
He wears a maroon silk shirt
that flutters in the wind of high-altitudes,
a pair of black trousers hugs his thighs
in cottony persistence,
blue and yellow hiking boots
with a streak of red on the soles,
visible when he moves around
in an urgency to exist. Does he want
all eyes on him, as if he’s
the red bishop among house sparrows?
The Doddabetta air must’ve peeled off
a layer of skin from his face,
the raw flesh beneath woken to pain
from the numbness of being,
to be born afresh
in the faraway sight of
trees swallowed by the fog,
in a birdcall that wasn’t answered,
in the memory of his tongue
burnt by hot coffee.
His ecstasy isn’t drowned
in the screams of tourists, before
he walks to the edge, allows his feet
to slip
as if it was an accident, and begins
to fall.
Jose Varghese is a writer/translator/editor from India. He is the author of ‘Silver Painted Gandhi and Other Poems’ and his second collection of poems will be published in 2021 (Black Spring Press Group). He was a finalist in LISP and Beverly Prize, a runner up in Salt Prize, and was commended in Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize. His works have appeared in Joao Roque Literary Journal, The Best Asian Short Story Anthology, Dreich, Meridian, Afterwards, Unthology 5, Unveiled and Reflex Fiction.