KUHU JOSHI

THE FIELD

Listen, I drank with my lover in bed,
Fratelli’s red, dripping with a sense of victory.
A necessary attempt
at reclaiming something. I didn’t know what

exactly. Us as main characters. I as more main. It being
my house, my walls. Echoes of birds from the garden.
Echoes of the old field

deserted. Yet
there were shadows. Centuries of women
walking, pitchers over heads, necks
quivering. Listen,

from a lamppost
a lone crow
was whispering: Womenlore… Folklore… How will you rewrite
your grandmothers? How will you revise
girls playing house in villages?

Grape seeds that grow into grapes
will tug with their weight on the vine.
The next morning, he stood
at my door, turning to wave his hand, about

to turn away. I reached my fingers to his hair
parting the field
for a moment.

__________

KUHU JOSHI IS A POET FROM NEW DELHI. SHE WAS A JANE COOPER FELLOW IN THE MFA WRITING PROGRAM AT SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE. HER POEM “RAAG DESH” WAS SELECTED BY GUEST EDITOR PAULA BONHICE FOR THE 2022 BEST NEW POETS ANTHOLOGY AND WAS AWARDED AN HONORABLE MENTION FOR THE 2022 JOHN B. SANTOIANNI PRIZE BY THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS. HER WORK HAS APPEARED IN RATTLE, PETRICHOR, THE YEARBOOK OF INDIAN POETRY, SONIC BOOM, THE BOMBAY LITERARY MAGAZINE, AND ELSEWHERE.