93
-Anuja Ghimire
my teacher sends us home
with a substitute chant in which we hail an actor’s name
not slogans for democracy
I have missed school because of my tonsillectomy
and the people’s marches to the king’s palace
before the all day curfew, my father stops in the street
with the crowd watching a man’s body writhing
after a shot, he says dying is slower than in the movies
in the orders of lights out, the only thrill is street patrol men
who look like my father but guns change their faces
even in the dark, they guard the street
my brother has a fever but we all eat khichdi
faces so close to the steel plates
the sickle moon catching us through the window
is half on our foreheads, half on the pale lake of rice
(Published in Orbis: London, 2020)
