from NER 40.4 (2019)

Three days two nights in a metal box laddering 
       down the barren heartland of the republic. 
Land blistered by drought & the blight of small towns:
       fratricide, religion & mass-distributed snuff
films in the paan shops. I was a boy trying to get home, 
       always trying to get home those days the city 
flinging me out. For hours I read The Stranger,
       counted the mullions on the windows 
pushing my feet against the warm breathing wall 
       of aluminum & sunmica, drifting in a heat
induced slumber on the upper berths where no hijra 
       could reach over & pinch my cock. Outside, 
the precision of metal & wheels: long blue metaphor 
       of the wandering womb in transit. I saw 
storms lash the ruined fields, lightning bolts tenfold
       brighter than all the village’s light bulbs 
put together. Four pukka houses with electricity, 
       one with telephone & no police station 
for miles. The sun bearing down infernal since dawn, 
       breathing fissures into the earth. Men sitting 
under a peepal tree in the evenings defeated by heat 
       & no wind, men whose knowledge of snow
 distant & disputed as Pluto. So why not the sorrow 
       farmer sowing himself in the crosshair
 of the oncoming train. I’ve seen in kinder times 
       the freight cars grind to a halt to let a herd 
of elephants pass. That one time outside the train 
       window: a woman in a niqab, & a ferret-
faced infant on her hips yanking her hair with still 
       the blind rage of birth, no hope for it, we saw 
the brooding swine of a father. The young men
       in the compartment each looked on, disbelieving 
at first, jealous of the idiot taking her home, then all 
       at once saddened by her beauty. Apologists 
for the low-grade genocide lost for words: the plain 
       shock at the sight of a great beauty existing 
without strife. The train moved along, & for hours 
       into the evening we nursed that silence to sleep, 
& all night the urinous stink moved in the compartments 
       like an old ghost. The shed & filth cumulating 
in the cars by the day’s end. The food, flying spices, 
       language changing every hundred kilometers, 
stations with names like divine nagar, clutter-
       buckganj, vestigial as horsehair barrister wigs. 
Outside, the elements beating down on the trundling worm 
       of rust. Outside, the landscape fuzzing across state 
lines, airborne viral strains, the dim industry with its sewer 
       breath at night to the fragrant mist rising off harvest 
hay in the morning. Closer to home, I saw a deer stray 
       into the edge of the monsoon’s verdure. I saw 
disappeared children made to beg in the arms of cripples. 
       I met hucksters who tried to offer me tea with ketamine. 
I heard a couple making love inside a coarse blanket 
       on the upper berth. I saw a leper radiating the same 
diameter of horror as the untouchable. And arriving 
       home, always the bruised sky of dawn telling me 
something I knew, for a moment, then didn’t.