"THE SATURDAY NIGHT SHOW" The Saturday night show Is like the moon outside my balcony A quarter full There is a lot that remains to fill up Recession in the 1930s People flocked to the movies The bourgeois today have their loyalties Netflix reruns And stock market index Too much space between the audiences Empty rows between people Watching the same dream That same anti-hero I had paid for a ticket Hoping for the scent of a woman To my left I was on the lookout For people maneuvering Stumbling Finding their seat After an entry Well near intermission I had dreamt of an exit With hundreds leaving in rows and columns One eye on the end credits There is that hollow inside The usher no longer flashes his torch With that air of self-importance The times Teach us well We learnt to navigate Find our little spaces In pitch dark © Vandana Kumar
"THE NIGHT IS A LOVE SONG" There is a big boat on the river tonight And it's still. This isn't the one Where rations were stocked Where men in war torn district hid. It's got the moon falling on it. Let's sit at the stern Or at the bow We can take stock later Count harvests missed I could make a list Of all the things that kept us away But lists do little Adding to the weight Inside shirt and skirt pockets Lists put pressure on us To recall where we kept them Let us instead, forget. The fog has lifted its veil The night wraps itself in a love song As light As a rayon shrug The one I wrap carelessly around me Signaling the end of winter Time is slipping by Take your dead grandfather's fishing net ensnare it. © Vandana Kumar
