Archive
Keating Road
What do we know
of dark places
that fill the spaces
between workshop
shelves and liquor
stores. the street
outside bears tyre
marks of tired lives
stretched like grime
under a fingernail.
Oiled hands beneath
dark machines
soil sheets in rooms
across the road, or
press rubber pieces
into deflated souls.
the city lies beyond
the gutter, a junkyard
heap of mangled trees
and skeletal houses.
What do we know
of dark places
that fill the faces
passing by in shuttered
light. the road outside
bears potholed longing,
it secretly deepens
with midnight feet
and wheels that turn
like bottle tops.
Janice Pariat (blog) is a freelance writer currently based in her hometown of Shillong, Meghalaya after many years of being away in Delhi and elsewhere. She is inspired by her mixed Portuguese, British and Khasi ancestry, literature, Shillong’s troubled history and folktales, everyday things, and travel. Her writing has been published in nthposition, Danse Macabre, Soundzine, tongues of the ocean, The Smoking Poet, Barnwood International Poetry Mag, The Caravan, Art India, Ultra Violet and Literati, among others.
qarrtsiluni 