Hunched, with a cane, under whipping echoes
of foreign men’s curses, he half-squatted, half-
sat pregnant with, heaving, a chest-full lifetime of
lies slipping through the shackles of his blank gaze;
on his trembling lap sits his children’s hopes
crafted in Hindi on generic postcards; one falls
onto his scabbed foot swollen from the earth’s
protestations against his lot – his only worth.
Published in SINGPOWRIMO:THE ANTHOLOGY, edited by Ann Ang, Joshua Ip and Pooja Nansi, Math Paper Press (2014)