about the author
Tushar Jain is an Indian poet, playwright, and author. He was the winner of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2012 and a winner of the Poetry with Prakriti Prize, 2013. Subsequently, he won the RL Poetry Award, 2014. He was a winner of the DWL Short Story Contest 2014 for his short story “A humiliating day for [Dr.] Balachander.” He won the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing, 2016. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Antiserious, The Nervous Breakdown, RædLeaf Poetry, Papercuts Magazine, streetcake magazine, The Sierra Nevada Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, and elsewhere.
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Two Poems
Tushar Jain
night
at
night
girls climb out
of his pillow
he watches
as the y crawl out
w al k
to the cupboard
sit inside
close its
doors
he tries
to chase
a girl
can
not
he has
two left feet
and
arms left two
tonight
he
climbs
down
the
pillow
(-badmove)
the pillow
melts
in t
o
t he
s h ee t
the boy
is
agrl
in a
cupboard
in the
pillow
school
he
removes
his f i n g e r s
before
he
enters
setting
down
the
pen,
he suggests
each
child
peel
away an ear
they
do
he
nods
turning to
the board,
he
d r a w s a
c
e i
l r
c
with the chalk
betweenhisteeth
children giggle; children will be chi-
he eats the chalk
the children copy
the circle on clean
white sheets
he removes his shirt
then his skin
a child toddles
to the win-
-dow
to open it
is
pulled
o ut
by seventy three
hands
(yellowgreenstrawberryredcinnamonbrow—‘it is C6H12O6, not C12H6O6’)
boys rush
to
close the window
it doesn’t
close
the teacher is
removing
his
bon e s