“Lent Birds” and Other Poems
by Feby Joseph
Lent Birds
and at dawn they wait by the waters… Sea-birds –
Snowy pier ornaments walking on stilts; masters of fishing
moving their oblong bodies in awkward grace as an ocean ballet
enters act 2 – we leave a cold church on a cold Lent.
In a sleepy winter-chained sea town woken by the cries
of salt-encrusted Sea-Giselles, Matthew and his fishing words
ring like fading bells as my son longs for chocolate and peers into
the display window of deserted sweet shops.
I mentally covet a chicken sandwich, quietly – but, not
quick enough, as my dead father comes by to pinch my ear;
I dream of his spicy roasted duck that flavored our Easter table
and from my curried memory, I succumb…
At a sea-staring table in a silent café, we devour pies.
As another sea-bird leaves a sleeping boat to walk on water
and snack on silvery fish; my son giggles through chocolate lips
and says, “Jesus must have been a crane!”
Why It’s Difficult to Write a Poem about My Hometown in English
I could write about trees – Rubber, Teak, Cashew,
Coffee, Coconut and a million other nameless giants
or about the different shades of damp untarred roads –
not terracotta, yet oozing fresh orange blood; a study
of the Kerala monsoon – cut, cross-section; my pen
copying out flow lines of afternoon winds escaping
through the sleeves of tree branches, cascading
over semi-dry leaves and chimney smoke and birds and
watercolour flowers traveling in postcards and the taste
of curling scripts, my people savour – curried fish…
I taste the sharp angles of English: crisp, pineapple-sweet
and tart in my mouth, yet it cannot compare…
I miss a vowel that has the mobius curls of ∞
but travels a finite lover’s-distance from my epiglottis
to the back of a rolled tongue – a sound only
found in Malayalam; soft-edged and dripping with
creamy jackfruit sweetness, perfuming paper
and pen and capturing the umami of Pampadi.
About My Father’s Portrait
Because we have such a tremendous capacity for relegating
things to amnesia, my mother would say, lighting a candle
every evening – Even a small ‘Thank you’ is enough,
as she would collect us from various corners of the house
for evening prayers in front of a wall of Gods.
She insisted the pale anaemic man high on the wall wasn’t
Jesus – Just a false white-man’s facsimile, lest we forget
the God’s we inherited. Likewise, she was sure, Mary
was a mocha maiden of Indian parentage; a black & white
young Jayalalithaa – Moon-faced, smiling Amma!
Her memories were alluvial & directly proportional to time
& inversely to unanswered questions – unrequited, I don’t
remember when the questions about him sedimented
deep enough to become the facsimile of an answer, or when
my father became another portrait on the wall.
Well known in concentric circles, Feby Joseph, a part-time procrastinator, weekend-antiquarian, and a full-time piano teacher from Mumbai, is the proud owner of Florence Nightingale’s false teeth – facing east! In the spare time that he doesn’t have, Feby dabbles in poetry and hopes to do for it what Einstein did for the electric can opener. Some of his works have been published in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Zoetic Press, The Bangalore Review, and Café Dissensus.
What do sea birds, Malayalam, and an Indian Jesus have in common? Three poems on home by Feby Joseph.