Bibhu Padhi
A HANDFUL OF STORIES
Float in the summer-night air.
Let us invent other stories
to support the old, fill in those
vacancies that our ancestors
left to themselves, assuming
they were what the stories
were not about.
Let us locate ourselves
in those vacant spaces—
we, who had hardly lived
our lives before we were
so absentmindedly terminated.
Let us today hold them carefully,
with our cupped palms
and bring down
our old stories floating
in the summer air.
Wild Goose Poetry Review 