DNAThey came from the Papal State and hadn’t been to a kindergarten and exclaimed, “Little men! We should be in Gulliver’s land.” The “men” suddenly grew up as if by mutation and took the fathers down the ages. Till, a sense of still being there gripped them, and they hastened up only to be frozen in test tubes.TruthThe blood mixed in the soil is not lost— God’s will reigns over planes. The devil pollutes the day with tentacles, the sea roars truth forever, the son bears the father’s burden, and love pampers rocks. The lost wealth shall return. In markets, fruits abound. The bee sucks honey there. With grace, we go to paradise.Aura Aura AuraBengal! Land of effulgence and horripilation…Dominatrices, flagellating momma…Smouldering alphabets, and tear-stained cacti;I do not know what! Gilt-edged speech and soaring IQs, Naxalbari and Nischindipur, thorny-fish and mishti-doi, swamps and stigmata! I am your son from the desert, Give me only…Taka! Taka! Taka!MemoirMathru devo bhava But what I remember most is the day she called me and showed me her breasts with scales setting incircular pyramids of translucent flakes. With the labyrinths exposed inside out like a sea anemone. I am an albino, colourless but all her other kids are green.Domina On a gabled roof of claymore mines a crow perches— I could never understand this artistic obsession with pain. Its sunflower blooms solar till a woman on the internet showed its priority when she passed a DC current into someone, strung up just to take it, writhing up and squirming in ruined catharsis of all sorrows.Excerpted with permission from The Moplah Speaks of the River, Umar Nizarudeen, Stitch/Antonym Collections.