Garden: A Poem by Aswin Vijayan

I live here. When you come to visit,

you bring the garden with you

and the snake is an albino — orange

slithering over your untouched skin.

We sit sipping cider and talking

about sex toys. What we are denied

we crave. I see the brown eye-slits

peaking from between the wefts

of your peach soft woollen sweats.

The body of a happy hippo on the table

between us, and its head in my mouth.

 

About The Poet

Aswin is a poet from Kerala, India. He has an MA in Poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Verse of Silence, The Tangerine, and Coldnoon among others. He is also the Managing Editor at The Quarantine Train.