Acknowledgment
written by: Archana Bahadur Zutshi
The cherry coloured fabric
Had a vibrant teasing look
Which never did fade.
The feminine touch was enhanced by my frame.
It was patterned by the slim dexterous fingers,
She patted carefully the floral pattern,
Stirring patterns for an unselfconscious,
It was a gender tap, a shocking acknowledgment!
It was like separation of the grain!
The blouse showed the midriff!
I was husked in a moment of unease,
Startling discovery of gender advent.
It all came with a nervous rush!
Not far from teens, uncool, lanky,
Grappling with growth-gaps?
So long as the stereotype is unfigured,
And the feminine trigger is not set by upsetting me,
I pranced around childlike abandoning,
In the prim air of familial admiration.
Fettered, gradually, by gendered graces,
The natural ease dissipated?
My gendered growth was socially sanctioned,
I eventually acknowledged!
It was challenging to challenge the pattern!
She writes for literary and online Journals. Two of her chapters on Philip Larkin's poetry and the poetry of Kamala Das and Mamta Kalia have been published. Her transliteration of Hindi poems of Siryakant Tripathi, ‘Nirala’ was published in Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies: An International Journal of Literature, Culture & Translation. Her poem was published in October 2018 by Spillwords.com. Her poems have been accepted by a few more International Journals.
She did her doctoral research on the poetry of Philip Larkin and Nissim Ezekiel.
Dr. A. Zutshi has a long teaching career. She is engaged in teaching at IGNOU, an Open University. She also taught at various other Colleges, and is currently engaged in teaching at Dr A P Sen Memorial Girls' PG College, Lucknow.
- Acknowledgment - March 1, 2019
- Song Of The Daughter Of A Mortuary Worker - October 19, 2018
