WW Fiction?

Three Poems

By Sajia Kabir

Cat Burglar

It would happen like this:

Ma would leave in the sink

a two-pound chicken to thaw;

when she came back ten minutes later,

the fowl would be gone, apparently gaining in death

the flight capability it lacked in life.

Not even a bone left to dump in the garbage.

Such was just one of many unsolved cases, none leading to arrest, let alone imprisonment,

of food unpaid for:

no graceful slink across our drab mosaic floor

or a rubbing of fur against one’s calves

or even an affecting purr.

Not to mention the vandalism of shit and urine

on our best sheets and blankets—

so much trouble to wash and dry in the middle of the monsoon season.

Somehow, I doubt that a plate of minced beef would have reformed your criminal instincts.

Room 5 at Grandma’s House

We were always warned not to go into Panch Nombor, Room No. 5, so naturally

we went in, every chance we could.

In the sanctum sanctorum of our uncles

stood the altar of books:

Rebecca, Asimov

a condensed paperback Axna Karenina

(with a Vivien Leigh photo on its cover),

O. Henry, and of course the Jeeves collection.

of Dial Paste

with stuck doors and gashed glass panes,

its contents with worm-eaten pages and loosened cover bindings,

it was a miracle the bookcase survived our touch—

no wonder my nanu made us stand in the corner with our hands holding our ears every time she caught us on the threshold of Room No. 5.

The peeled off cracks in the paint have been now whitewashed

and we in turn guard the bookcase

from the hands of our younger cousins.

Lulu Auntie and the Monkey

My mother grew up in Purana Dhaka

in a yellow house with shuttered windows. A verandah engirdled the house

and trees engirdled the verandah.

Lulu Auntie was learning how to crawl, practicing for the grown-ups’ applause

when a monkey appeared in the doorway

(this was before all our city simians were exported to America). The monkey jumped onto the palm-leaf mat,

swept aside the thin quilt

and snatched Lulu, who forgot to cry.

In a parallel universe my aunt learnt

how to eat mangoes with their skins on,

and became inoculated against vertigo,

and when the monkey catchers discovered her and tried to return her via an orphanage’s door

to civilization,

she walked with a slight stoop

and kept scratching at her clothes.

In this world, my grandmother

shooed away the monkey and got her third child back. My aunt’s a respectable teacher now with a husband and two little children.

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