Kunwali Bora’s poem: Chant Of The Modern And Forlorn


Beyond the utterance

Of eternal pain

That room of reeking 

Theories, oppositions, refrain

Can you be my prophet

Can you can you

Teach me life?

Can you beyond 

Mindfulness, Meditation, models

Procure a balm to 

Heal and feel, but never reveal

From my silence 

Drink my poisonrage

Neelakanth1 will you be? 

Will you be me

Yet preserve me

Love me lick me

Reinstate my fifth year’s dignity

To knowing bring meaning

Carry me in a palaquin

With my boulder up the summit

Day after day after day

Will you crave and cower

At my sharded reelditty

Rice, river, flower, voice

All return to me

My body yes, my body too

Beyond masks, morsel, morale

Can you see me?

HA. HA. HA. HA. HA.

Nothing! Nothing!

It made a nothing

A scroll of doom

Cite no one

ii am citations enough

Leave the scripture to the devil

Else let me be

Whereto whereto

Must ii run

Which river will drink me?

What stream so holy?

Take my name away from me

Or will you be my soil, Goodwiller

Be my mother

And embrace me 

Like the pain of the menses

They say ii am a nonexistent disease.


1 Refers to the episode of Samundra Manthan in Hindu Mythology, in which Shiva drinks the poison which is a by-product of the process of obtaining elixir. His throat becomes blue and hence the name Neelakanth (the one with a blue throat).


Kunwali Bora is a queer writer, editor and researcher from Assam, recently graduating from JNU. Her work explores the various possibilities of form and language to voice a hybrid consciousness. She has published with Rosewood Publications and Humrooh Publication. She has directed plays for JNU crowds and paints portraits occasionally.

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