June 2021
Bio Note: India-born, I am a senior academic and author-freelance journalist from the suburban Mumbai, India. I have published 22 books so far, some solo and joint. I edit Setu: www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html
Outsiders
The Mumbai rain
back-lit by the sodium-vapor lamps sweeping the cityscape
shimmering, gold-hued, majestic,
yet looking lonely and lost
as that vulnerable hooker
trying to appear bold, audacious
her bruises and scars
carefully painted-up in that gloss
arched eyebrows raised
a cigarette dangling from
obscenely reddish lips,
in permanent pout
or, is it suppressed anger?
high heels
short skirt—
the universal dress
of a young body-seller
first recorded by a French poet
as a restive flaneur
standing quietly, nearby a vagabond and his skeletal cur
on that deserted stretch, being watched.
Waiting, yet not—for some rom-com ending or, a Disney-world
Cinderella outcome, happy for the bourgeois viewers in their
costly apartments or, perhaps—for a modern miracle in a cynical
market, that may or may not happen, in real-time!
©2021 Sunil Sharma
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL