When November Danced on Leaves | Vandana Kumar

 -Vandana Kumar

I wish the month

Would feel like one

These days

I wish it would spare us

This entire formality

Of arriving on time

An eclectic blue shrug on my bedside

Mocks me

As does a thin warmer

In an easily accessible second drawer

It's all my overthinking, perhaps

For when have objects felt that redundant?

That unused

It's a season with tropical sweat

On the brow

I ache to cross my arms

The times have lost

Their customary nip

Both on and off the records

The city grows increasingly sick

The ratio of patients

To caregivers

Is too discomforting

The season suddenly 

Feels like those

Undistinguishable hypermarkets

In every mall

Knowing how to pronounce the month

In different languages

Doesn't help

Vandana Kumar is a French teacher, translator, recruitment consultant, Indie Film Producer, cinephile and poet residing in New Delhi, India. Her poems have been published in national and international websites, journals and anthologies of repute – ‘Outlook’, ‘Madras Courier’, ‘Grey Sparrow Journal’ to name only a very few. She has been a part of seminal feminist anthologies like the Indie Blue publication ‘The Kali Project’. Her cinema articles appear regularly in ‘Just-cinema’ and ‘The Daily Eye’. She was a jury member for the ‘All India Poetry Competition’ organized by ‘Cocoa-Butter’ and also co-edited their debut print anthology that resulted from this competition. Her recent collection of poems ‘Mannequin Of Our Times’ (February 2023) - has been awarded the ‘The Panorama International Book Award 2023’ and the ‘Mighty Pens Awards’ in the poetry category.