since 1988 aditya bahl

since 1988aditya bahl

“Nothing will have taken place but the place.”

— Stéphane Mallarmé

a modular need

UNIT 1

6 7

beneath a brick façade a brick façade

ants who live in this house I don’t own know it

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

10 11

snow always whiter than the page it falls on

one’s a cloud two’s a company

three’s a counterfeit croc

12 13

in the azaan pauses a kabaadiwallah

calls

fellatio dreaming of misprints in an epistolary novel

14

the hole in the sock does the sock know

beneath white sheets the lady of the night is unbearable without my eyes

19

the lone word trapped inside a megaphone longs to be a stray cat

nightfall you let the empty grocery bag be in the fridge for one more day

22 23

lighting a beedi he becomes the draughtsman he is reflexively

some of the steel pillar shows thru parts of a skinny actress

24 25

once Plato sd

lots ofballotboxes

the coughing alone the neighbour too

wanting to separate from the apron one mends one says I once twice

28

CITY LIMITS a brick factory made of bricks

UNIT 2tch tch tch

32 33

ANDES

anda

UGHGH

certaincisternpistons

34 35

BUT

outofoats

BOUNDARY

dry laundry

36 37

BOULDERS

once her slow-lipped groangrown twice hard of hearing

I know the intimidating intimacy of free fries.

38 39

ITALIC

do lilac lean a lil

skyoffkey

m a y a k o v s k y

40

WHO

HOW

42 43

this endemic sordid static between f and f in of

tinnitusminusbison

incest in cents

44 45

DAMNED

dawndawned

CHORUS

once chores to the coarse ones

46 47

SEMBLANCE

a free sausage looks like one

48 49

ASKEWexcuse mesd icarus

OREO

or forhalo isdudedoleful

50 51

nkot

52 53

OH

back whenI wasa Russianpeasant

ONErunover

racoonrunover

54 55

the whole of weltanschauung is full of holes

SEA

of fs et

56 57

BOSOM

a boothitherconcealed

MALLARMÉ

the crisis ofmandatory crisisdrills

58

POLIS

enjoy your evening

60 61

substantial stilllife suggestsa stubbed toe

JEER

jesus tothe ear, sorryto the eye

62 63

DADDY

spurts of thatwhich hurta cam

DOLLARS

doloreson allfours

64 65

VARIANCE

littlelittle MARMALADE

for the simple tangible visible book

UNIT 3in lieu of surplus

68 69

where my decayed tooth once was now a word enters its grave

monthlytenement

hostagesituation

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

72 73

having undressed my wife folds her robe first

tell the dangling the delphinium

first fell on your tongue

74 75

square the sparrows disperse as we approach then we disperse

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

78 79

a lone thesaurus in

hand in bed in Russia

on the verge of waking myself the pillow is being

80 81

concrete being two-dimensional but for the face of a splattered mosquito

82 83

lookalike

gourdsgourds

he listens to his radio while he oils his rickshaw

84

set in alabaster. The smelly feet of the rival intern

86 87

having to bite all my nails for whom reeds enjoying in the wind since 1988

88

each pine needle made of squares inside each square the twitching of a tourist’s glass eye

as he keeps wiping his prosthesis clean withthe body of her white camisole

92 93

eat praylovexerox

94 95

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

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.

since 1988© 2018 Aditya Bahl

Cover painting by Johannes S.H. Bjerg.

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