Michael Creighton

Michael Creighton is an elementary school teacher who lives in Delhi with his wife and three children.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various places, including, Wasafiri (UK); Muse India (on-line); Ego Magazine (on-line); Tehelka (India); and Ruminate Magazine (US). 

BREAKING NEWS

Five years after the Gujarat Riots

In front of the hidden camera,

they boast of their work that week:

the pig they killed

and hung from the roof of a mosque,

a pregnant woman

slit open,

the hundreds they hunted,

hacked, burned—

“We are not feeble rice eaters!”

Babu Bajrangi declares,

his hand shaking

like a dry leaf.

The week the story breaks,

the temperature falls

and street-side camp fires haze the air,

though it’s not yet November.

Men clump and murmur

in the market,

and the squirrel my son raised

with a dropper and soft fruit

walks away in the mouth of a cat.

SOUTH DELHI ROADSIDE, 9 PM

As he sells his last
half-melted mango popsicle
and starts to push
his cart home,

he thinks that by now
the ice must be melting
high in Himachal.

Perhaps they are banking
the fire early tonight. Perhaps
they are stepping out
to piss.

Perhaps they are watching
winter wheat ripen
in moonlight.