A missing bird (police report)
Police report
| Date of the report: 23/03/2022 |
| Officer’s badge number: 887 |
| Suspect(s): The fat boy in the kitchen |
| Date and time of arrest: 8 am |
| Location of arrest: The Little Kitchen |
| Nature of incident: Recovery of a dead body |
| I responded to a call on March 23, 2022, at approximately 7:30 am. As soon as I heard a chirping sound from the phone call, I directed the call to our linguistic center’s bird language expert’s desk. Upon translating the call, it was found out that two sparrows were suspicious of a fat guy trapping a young bird in the kitchen. The location given to us was a two and a half storeyed blue house with a red roof. Upon arriving, we met the sparrows leading us in the direction of the stairs and then onto a kitchen on the top floor, right below the terrace. The kitchen had a red roof, and its broad sliding windows were facing a small garden, a possible trap for birds to come by the balcony. The morning sun had yet to ripen in heat, and a feeble light fell onto the small garden, its shrubbery packed full of yam leaves, and foxtail grasses, providing shade to the loose cool black soil beneath, like a soft underbelly of the lizard. The periwinkles and a few roses accessorized dots of pinks and reds on the green shrubbery through and through. A couple of sugar canes and a guava tree over-looked them, climbing towards the full sun exceeding the height of the red roof. The kitchen was empty, with a tiled kitchen counter, a sink, a dining table, and a kitchen rack. No suspect was found. However, after a few minutes of search, the stiff body of the bird was found right behind the rack, its body stuck and wings clipped in between the rack and the wall. It reminded me of the man who goes on a trek and ends up his arm stuck on a big rock. Entire footage of him, till he cuts his arm and gets out of there. He watches videos of life back in the city, billboards, cafes, and people. I wonder if the bird did think about its nestlings, its babies, the branches, electric poles, pulses, soil, and worms. I felt sick to my stomach, as I thought about soft bird muffles, as life escaped from its beak. In the meantime, the suspect was taken out of the shower and sat down for interrogation on the front porch. Officer B presented him with the lifeless body of a bird, the suspect closed his eyes in reflex to the flailing three slender toes across his face. The officer asked, “There was a dead bird there an entire time and you never realized?” The suspect nodded blankly. Upon his arrest, he asked a single thing, “Do birds have ears?” |
My little kitchen
The soles of my feet, translucent
White blotches appear like the Orion belt,
Spread across the sole- a night sky,
The whiteness from being pressed out
On veins, blood circulation
From standing at work, on the bus, and on a walk home.
.
A handful of rays from an evening
Slither away from my hold,
Throwing off my Jordan 1s on two different sides
Of the welcome mat
The thumps on the dry concrete,
Follow my steps to the little kitchen,
Full of jostled dishes on the sink
A quiet breeze from the large sliding windows,
whistling of the pressure cooker far away, drown
the evening in a collective murmur
The neighborhood plunge into darkness,
So does the kitchen with its bulb-out
Except for the lights from the neighborhood,
shining palely onto the smooth tiles and ceiling.
.
My little kitchen,
sits in silence, with its face on its palm,
Turning its back on me, a few roaches running on it
I touch its shoulder as I insist,
it turns to me at a sound of a switch,
It smiles- the fluorescent tube light flash
.
I take off my socks,
I run the tap water and the same three songs
remain to hum on my lips
a dry spell
desperate to be taken home
.
Aimless love
On a luscious Sunday evening, I find myself cutting some pork belly for dinner on my kitchen counter. It starts off as fatty-meaty slime, sticking to palms, clogging the pores as the knife’s plastic handle forces its way. Through a deep plunge into the thick rind, the cut, barges further into subcutaneous fat depot, slicing down the tissues, muscles, and then meat. A gaze of mine falls down like pieces falling down to the chopping board as failed as frivolous dominoes with no intent of being one. The pieces remind me of the earth’s surface’s deposit, the soil horizon from a childhood science book, and three layers of topsoil, subsoil, and bedrock. All of it is divided in such a simultaneous manner that it almost looks like a face, not in terms of geometry, but rather like someone with flesh identity: a beautiful red meaty bottom of full lips or flushed cheeks, slapped up with a gush-mush of shiny fat, hardened up jell, all covered up with a thick, crisp pork rind like a scarf over a pretty head. As I keep slicing through and through, more feverishly, the pieces happen to take momentary incarnations of shapes and sizes, one precise piece tears apart at the rear end of fat terrain in such a manner that it looks more like Pearl Krabs, the whale from SpongeBob. The characters keep on changing with each new piece, sometimes it’s a cow, then a jellyfish, and even shorter pyramids. When poured into the hot pan, it sings tempered noises of screams, a melody, a foreign language conversing shriller, every time I pour onions, garlic to fry, or tomatoes for gravy. The fragrant smell of a bowl full of spices settles as hot damp steam on window panes, as I turn off the heat, I stare at it with the affection of a lover, a love born out of adoration, destined to adore without any unkind words, slam on the door. Just like comfortable silence on the telephone, it stays still, steam rising off from its runny rich golden oil’s shimmer, soaking in the colorful glory, tinted with blushing myoglobin’s delight frosted with coriander. Just like a town introduced.
कुकरको तिन सिट्टी लागिसक्यो (मुर्म हाइक)
रन्थनिएको छेपारोको तालमा रफ्तारिदो एक मुठी स्वास
स्वासको मुस्लो सँगै फुल्लिएको छाती
लटरम्मै फलेका स्याउ जस्तै गाला
र मुर्म गाउँको टुप्पो उक्लने आश
लगभग मेरो कम्मरसम्म कद भएको
तर उमेरमा चाही निक्कै पाखो
रुखको भूतपूर्व हाँगो
बाटोमा गासिएको एकलौटो मित्रता: लौरो
.
कठै! लौरो, मेरो ताते जोरमा जसरि तसरी मुर्म टप उक्लियो
ढुंगामा थचार्रिए म, लौरो चाही उभियो
पन्छी-आँखे दृश्यवन, तल बिश्राममा रहेको मुर्म गाउँ
मुर्म वासिन्दा र मुर्मका बालखे गीत मु
र्मका थिचिएका खरका छाना
गाई गोठ र कुखुरे बस्ती
घोक्रिएका बोकाका गायन
.
मेरो कथित छुट्टिको बिश्राम
‘अलिक relax गर न,
बिर्सिदे पिरोल्ने कुरा’ मनको सुझाव
तर आफ्नो नाम कसरी बिर्सु?
न नै बिर्सिए मेरो घरको आवाज
इट्टे गोरेटोका नेपा-अंग्रेजी गनगन
‘हुन्छ नी like, हैन the thing is, you know नी’
“ओयॆऎऎए अशिम! के बसायिस यो? कुकरको तिन सिट्टी लागिसक्यो”
my mother’s scream cuts through
right here, right now.
कुँजिएका बानेश्वोरका ती गल्लीहरु
राजस्व बिभागमा मेरो टोकन पालो आयो कि?
फोनको टावर आउनासाथ क्रेडिट कार्ड म्याद समाप्तिको call पो आउने हो कि?
मेरो ९-५ जागिर, चाँदी जलपी कपालको बिरामी स्व्याँग
८८४८को बेलानाकार बोत्तल र साथीभाइका ठट्टा
चैत्रको छिप्पिएको घाममा छाले जुत्ताको पोलाइ र अनिदो आँखाको हेराइ
.
दाते हिमालका कल्कि तिर
लम्किएको सुन्तले घामको छाया,
निला, शान्त जलाशयको मिठो निन्द्रा,
एक जोर भइ टासिएका बादलको संगठन
र यी विशाल सम्पदाको बीच
म केवल थोप्लो भएको आश्वासन
.
मेरो लौरो साथीले म घरको यादमा भएको सोच्दो हो
तर यो लेखाइ, त्यो सोचाइ विपरित
कोरिएको सफल-असफल प्रयास…
.
If only mirrors were half as kind as the soup.
The streetlights are yet to go out,
Tired from its night’s service,
The shops around the neighborhood,
Remains shuttered like a closed eye.
The chirpings of the morning birds,
Drown into the whistles of my pressure cooker,
The white mist is identical to the fog outside.
.
When I take off the lid from the cooker,
A boiling stew vapors off and settles on the windows,
It saves me from cruelty,
That my large side windows reflect-
My large silhouette,
Stout body broadened and ballooned,
The shape of my face puckered into a puff,
While the thin, weak, un-toned arms dangle,
Unnaturally falling unto unflattering positions.
.
I pour the soup into a serving pot,
My shadow is thrown from the kitchen bulb,
onto the soup, onto the pot.
I pretend I have a flat tummy, a slim face,
Strong arms and thick neck,
I am seven feet in my little soupy world,
If only mirrors were half as kind as the soup.
.
Russian Satellite
When the bodies fell
I fell too, slumped on my plastic chair,
An evening in my little kitchen.
I was reading a Reddit post,
a man from a war country
His last drink before a battlefield,
Watching over the disappearing streets,
Buildings cut in half, crushed with screams.
.
I wonder if he recalls before the flash,
a silent stretching midnight cityscape,
Its lanes- thick, young, and green,
the main road, the swimming pool,
the theatre and the crest of hills.
The roofs and their building
Steaming, and curling for a midnight tea
Their windows level head silver moon,
Gleaning and glistening
.
Then a sudden realization
in the midnight sky,
the dotted white portal opening
ungainly spiraling, materializing
a Russian Satellite,
the flash realized into an explosion
A video brims with screams from it,
I could feel it through my kitchen walls
.
I wonder about the world’s indifference
Out of the kitchen door,
Whose back remains punctuated
with a metal hook, a hung lapel of
an office bag. It looks at me.
I look back at them with teary eyes
.
Phantom Smell Syndrome (I &II)
I.
It’s been two days since I’ve been unwell
The windows are shut inaudible, to the
curly swirling of the wind
that leaves a knock to remind me of the havoc
of what lies beneath the groaning sky.
.
I’ve been skipping school and my spine has fallen off
from my pocket, I’ve lost it somewhere.
I am the lump of my bed, rolled in a blanket
Like a bandaged arm,
Beads of sweat rolled to my belly button
My t-shirt shrunk, plastered to my skin
Sticky like melted cotton candy
A bitter warmth in my body
Shivering from the sweat or fever
.
The most bothersome thing that exists
between curtains of my forehead
Swooshing out of my nostrils
A hot travel of fistful blow, Congested
Swollen passages of nostrils, leaking
.
But every time I would smell something,
Powder of ashes, crushed like the cotton bud of a cigarette
Burnt out a little more before being put out
Folding, crushing, colliding cindery
against a cold concrete – would be smelt.
.
I entered the kitchen listlessly, looking for a solution
I did what I knew best, I put a pot on a stove,
The cold of the kitchen warming with its vapor
Turning like a suspended tornado, slowly
Dissolving into the thawing patch of warmth.
The bottom of the pot dry from the heat of the gas,
Pouring of meat and veggies, the smoke of garlic and chilies,
The steam rises off the soup, the dancing pieces,
Of chunks in soup, the swirl of the spoon.
.
However, a sharp inhale of the soup,
Brought an unmistakable smell
Of burning logs on a foggy winter night
.
I googled the condition, it was called
phantom smell syndrome
I slump into the plastic chair, from the defeat.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
.
II.
With a bored man’s movement,
I take up the spoon to my mouth,
As the vaporing spoon enters my mouth,
The buds of the tongue lathered to the gravy of the soup,
The soft pieces of carrot,
crushed with a delicate touch of a chew,
the melting meat and its succulent gluttony,
the warmth of the swallowed food,
reaching to the parts of the abdomen unaware of the consciousness
.
on the satisfaction of the food,
I sigh in relief, an inhale in between the congested
nostrils, the air is tasted for the first time,
it’s transparency like the honesty of
a rivulet found between the mountains.
My palms find themselves opening up the sliding window,
A kind breeze passes through, and so does the smell of wet soil,
Rain droplets, green leaves, and the stars
.
A little further on a shrubby rise,
I squinted at a shiny object,
I found my spine
hanging on a guava branch.
lalahang 