Colonies of Resistance: Three Poems by Arya Gopi
Photo: Karan Madhok
‘I carry my exile in my pocket— / seventeen reminders that buzz / like electronic prayers / to gods who’ve forgotten / how to synchronize.’
Pulse
I plop love between armpits—
not rosewater,
but salt, stench, earth.
A debauchery of kisses
scatters like pamphlets,
each one a trembling manifesto.
Noises go haywire:
fireworks behind doors.
The neighbours call it war.
It is only our bodies
marking new borders.
What is the object of desire?
Graffiti on a prison wall,
a note on a bus ticket,
the margin of a textbook.
Pre-love, post-love—
the same body split,
history folded into skin.
Plopped down, desire stays—
intrepid as a child’s question,
fragile as a petri dish
where the heart breeds
its colonies of resistance.
*
Appointment with Disintegration
I am a minority of one,
waiting at the bus stop while three apps
promise three different arrivals—
this is the cosmopolitan condition:
to be perpetually displaced
from the schedule you thought you knew.
My father owned no smartphone
yet arrived everywhere on time.
I, armed with GPS and notifications,
wander lost
in the geography of obligations.
The bank closes at four,
the post office at half past three.
The government office exists
in a parallel universe
where lunch breaks last forever
and forms expire the moment you fill them.
I carry my exile in my pocket—
seventeen reminders that buzz
like electronic prayers
to gods who’ve forgotten
how to synchronize.
Each morning I wake
already late for something
I haven’t remembered yet,
already apologizing
to future versions of myself
who will stand in wrong queues
with correct documents
for appointments that moved
to buildings that no longer exist.
*
Where Will the Birds Go
In autumn abroad, the leaves fall hard,
pressed flat like letters no one will read.
My son tugs at my hand, looks up:
“Where will the birds go
when the leaves are gone?”
A pigeon folds itself on a lamppost,
stoic, indifferent.
A sparrow dives, reckless,
snatching a leaf from the curb
as if its small chaos could matter.
I kneel to tie his shoe;
the lace loops around a leaf,
a quiet attempt at repair
against the order of things.
What can I tell him?
That they follow the sun,
the warm branches,
the trees that still remember shade?
But the birds do not speak.
They lift, they vanish,
obeying a law I cannot read.
***
Dr Arya Gopi is a bilingual poet and translator working in English and Malayalam, with more than half a dozen published books, including six Malayalam poetry collections. Her English collections include Sob of Strings (2011) and One Hundred Lines of Discords (2023). She has received over fifty national and international literary awards, including the Kerala State Sahitya Akademi Kanakasree Award. Her work has appeared in journals such as Guftugu Magazine, Muse India, Teesta Review, Modern Literature International Journal, and The Usawa Literary Review, and has been translated into Hindi, English, Kannada, and Bengali. You can find her on Instagram: @draryagopi.
