since 1988 aditya bahl - deletepress.org€¦ · since 1988 aditya bahl “Nothing will have taken...
Transcript of since 1988 aditya bahl - deletepress.org€¦ · since 1988 aditya bahl “Nothing will have taken...
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since 1988 aditya bahl
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since 1988aditya bahl
“Nothing will have taken place but the place.”
— Stéphane Mallarmé
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a modular need
UNIT 1
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6 7
beneath a brick façade a brick façade
ants who live in this house I don’t own know it
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8 9
in my father’s dream a potato and my mother thoroughly washed
Tuesday I go to sit and watch
the waiter sit and watch the door
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10 11
snow always whiter than the page it falls on
one’s a cloud two’s a company
three’s a counterfeit croc
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12 13
in the azaan pauses a kabaadiwallah
calls
fellatio dreaming of misprints in an epistolary novel
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14
the hole in the sock does the sock know
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beneath white sheets the lady of the night is unbearable without my eyes
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the lone word trapped inside a megaphone longs to be a stray cat
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nightfall you let the empty grocery bag be in the fridge for one more day
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22 23
lighting a beedi he becomes the draughtsman he is reflexively
some of the steel pillar shows thru parts of a skinny actress
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24 25
once Plato sd
lots ofballotboxes
the coughing alone the neighbour too
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wanting to separate from the apron one mends one says I once twice
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CITY LIMITS a brick factory made of bricks
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UNIT 2tch tch tch
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32 33
ANDES
anda
UGHGH
certaincisternpistons
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34 35
BUT
outofoats
BOUNDARY
dry laundry
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36 37
BOULDERS
once her slow-lipped groangrown twice hard of hearing
I know the intimidating intimacy of free fries.
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38 39
ITALIC
do lilac lean a lil
skyoffkey
m a y a k o v s k y
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WHO
HOW
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42 43
this endemic sordid static between f and f in of
tinnitusminusbison
incest in cents
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44 45
DAMNED
dawndawned
CHORUS
once chores to the coarse ones
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46 47
SEMBLANCE
a free sausage looks like one
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48 49
ASKEWexcuse mesd icarus
OREO
or forhalo isdudedoleful
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50 51
nkot
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52 53
OH
back whenI wasa Russianpeasant
ONErunover
racoonrunover
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54 55
the whole of weltanschauung is full of holes
SEA
of fs et
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56 57
BOSOM
a boothitherconcealed
MALLARMÉ
the crisis ofmandatory crisisdrills
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POLIS
enjoy your evening
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60 61
substantial stilllife suggestsa stubbed toe
JEER
jesus tothe ear, sorryto the eye
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62 63
DADDY
spurts of thatwhich hurta cam
DOLLARS
doloreson allfours
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64 65
VARIANCE
littlelittle MARMALADE
for the simple tangible visible book
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UNIT 3in lieu of surplus
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68 69
where my decayed tooth once was now a word enters its grave
monthlytenement
hostagesituation
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70 71
individuals only as individualin this world as individual
meat patties
behind a vacant tower dew has formed on the body ofa crushed coke can
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72 73
having undressed my wife folds her robe first
tell the dangling the delphinium
first fell on your tongue
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74 75
square the sparrows disperse as we approach then we disperse
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76 77
inside a single roomthe body of his blue jeans
hangs on a single nail
every inflation my ancestors vow to reuse the value of tea leaves
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78 79
a lone thesaurus in
hand in bed in Russia
on the verge of waking myself the pillow is being
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80 81
concrete being two-dimensional but for the face of a splattered mosquito
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82 83
lookalike
gourdsgourds
he listens to his radio while he oils his rickshaw
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84
set in alabaster. The smelly feet of the rival intern
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86 87
having to bite all my nails for whom reeds enjoying in the wind since 1988
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88
each pine needle made of squares inside each square the twitching of a tourist’s glass eye
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as he keeps wiping his prosthesis clean withthe body of her white camisole
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92 93
eat praylovexerox
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94 95
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
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96 97
Some of these poems have previously appeared in ant ant ant ant ant, Lightning’d Press, Lilliput Review, Opon, Otata, and Otoliths.
Aditya Bahl is a member of Radical Notes, a Delhi-based Marxist collective. He is the author of & all (LRL Textile Series) and Three Theses on the End of the Poem (Aakar Books) both forthcoming in 2017. A chapbook titled this is visual poetry by aditya bahl was published in 2012.
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since 1988© 2018 Aditya Bahl
Cover painting by Johannes S.H. Bjerg.
delet_edeletepress.org