eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 47

POETRY

46

AUTUMN IN DELHI
    DEVANSHI KHETARPAL                                   

The track will close down anytime under the scintillating pillars.
Back where I planned to leave a tooth ajar on the greatness
of the ceiling, I lost five times my own strength in the gallows.
Lulla’s asked me not to climb the roofs and fret
about what lies in the palaces.
Droughty- lies the pull of our skin. The sky is all
but an assemblage of black stars that broke to radiate the shards of light,
thrust upon the bleakness of our lives.
Palisades are the fish tails of the clouds. They skip over stones
to keep their bent backs kneeling over the ochre shags, says Lulla.
I agree.
None notice the things of late, kept on the scorched
belvederes of the stiffened veins of Delhi.
Lulla thinks the earth kisses me upon the brow.
She thinks I must let myself sleep in the earth’s peace.
That’s what they call the night when we slip into an easiness of the fray
and the soil’s stronghold uproots
a ceasing cliff with trials and punches struck on high notes.

Devanshi Khetarpal is a student at St. Joseph’s
Convent Senior Secondary Girls’ School,
Bhopal. She is the author of Welcome to Hilltop
High (Indra, 2012) and is currently working on
her collection of poems. She is an attendee of
the Oxford Prep Experience at Corpus Christi
College, University of Oxford, where she majored
in Creative Writing. She is also the founder and
coordinator of Club Ink- a literary club from
Bhopal and the editor-in-chief of its international e-newsletter, Inklette. She has been published and featured in various national and
international print and online journals, magazines and newspapers like HT City, Blogger’s
Park, Fledglings, Teen Ink and Robin Age.

eFiction India | June 2014