A Confidential Letter to Burning Voices

by Akhu Chingangbam

We have had many discussions
some said yours is a revolution
some said you all are spoilt brats
some said you all are the "heavenly poets" of Neruda
some made calls to kill you all.

But we have come to the conclusion
that your voluminous poems will be counted
as literature,
they will be taught in school
but as poetry has a habit of reflecting
its surrounding,
yours too is filled with so many
unwanted things.

we, the official of Govt of Manipur, request
you all that from now on
be optimistic about what you write
and write good things about our land
dont scold the officials, politicians
dont remind us about any history that you witnessed
dont talk of effigies, you can write about mountains
but dont write about the conditions of roads in Hills

You all will be paid
if you write one poem a week.
you will not be paid
if you write more than one poem a week
or you take more than one week to complete a poem

So from now on
you all have become 21st century
Manipuri literature

Congratulation!

At your service,
Manipur Government
25/06/09

RIGHT to EDUCATION

by Usham Rojio

I’m the jailbird of my body,
the term of sentence is indefinite
Exclamation is the boat of my life
No way to escape, I must howl
To die, to sleep is atone
But my ‘right to life’ is out of tune.
Rightly remarked, I read somewhere,
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian"
Search for such life, we’ll prove fine,
Dreams wrapped with grief and disgruntled
Silently standing under the fall, such is our kind.
Thanks to the black suit lawyers,
whose hearts are full of black markers,
They make laws for Lawmakers;
See, how merciful they are;
They send us a package of declaration,
A package of RIGHT to EDUCATION,
With their gun pointing on our brains.
Nor the beginning, nor the end drains.

His and Hers

by Soibam Haripriya 

A bigger face
a bigger strap
a smaller face
a smaller strap
for thick muscular hands for thin slender arms
They said its
God-given
big things for man
small things for woman
Titan had wrapped them up
with velvety cloth
perfect wedding gifts
His and Hers

A bigger hand
A harder slap
leaving bluish purple marks
you get accustomed to

Slender hands
to be wrung about helplessly to
welcome
a burn here, a cut there as
one her kind
should get accustomed to.

And all these came
packed in a golden box with velvet inside
the sturdy-ness of his, the softness of hers
God-given
wrapped in skin and bones Perfect gifts
for Hu-man-kind

Three Questions

by Soibam Haripriya

Why did you give me
this irreparable world to inherit
Tainted with stains of history
the world is lost to my kind
Your gallant invoking of mere two battles
fought by women
amuses me to no end
for you know not
I live and die fighting
innumerable ones everyday

Why did you give me
your cemented dogma
where subdued
tender shoots
of green struggle beneath
I am older than the seasons
I am the aged clump of grass
taking root
unrelentingly cracking
the cemented courtyard
I die and sprout again
Why did you give me this soft tissue
deftly at my throbbing
core to break and bleed
at first contact
You judge me by this myth
I am younger than your myths
I will melt and mould
Genesis and revelation
to a lump of nothingness
and mock the demise of creation

The Other Revolutionary

by Shreema Ningombam

She took up Irabot’s sickle
To chop off the overgrown beard
On her mother’s chin
She too is a revolutionary
The wicked wind licks lecherously
Her thighs along which the phanek slithers
Yielding to the wanton wind
The phanek prostrate on the wayside cried
‘Hey lady! you have dropped me’
She knowingly did not look back
She too is a revolutionary

The evening prayer to Sanamahi was offered
Forgetting her crimson lunar cycle
Only to remember when her man tucked her phanek
From her waist in that drunken night
As the faint scent of haeme whiffs along
She too is a revolutionary

She rode away in the air
Screamed with the muffled mouth
Forgot when ought to remember
Swam in the cloud
She too thinks a thought
She too is a revolutionary
That night in that bloody war
A seed of revolution was sown In her ravaged womb
Against law against time; against all dimensions of life
A revolution grows in her belly
She is a revolutionary through the ages