By Bhuwan Thapaliya
PROMPT—No one noticed ...
We had several yaks
which we brought to the pastures
in the highland in summer.
We used to sell
Yak butter in the villages nearby.
But then my mother
sold all the yaks one afternoon
shuddering in the mountain breeze.
A priest’s son
had an eye on my sister.
He enticed her
with his oratorical skills.
They got married.
My mother doesn’t know
where they are now.
I know but I have
promised me
not to reveal.
My mother is
very fragile and sick.
There is no joy in her eyes,
only silent despair and abject shame
at what she has now become
and maybe at the legacy, she is leaving me
- bleached yak horns, bronze figurines
and an idle of the towering Buddha.
I stay with her and console her.
I know little about my father.
Bhuwan Thapaliya is a poet writing in English from Kathmandu, Nepal. He works as an economist and is the author of four poetry collections. His poems have been published in Wordcity Literary Journal, Pandemics Literary Journal, Trouvaille Review, Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic Initiative (Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University), International Human Rights Art Festival, Poetry and Covid: A Project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Plymouth, Nottingham Trent University, Pandemic Magazine, The Poet, Journal of Expressive Writing, Valient Scribe, Strong Verse, Jerry Jazz Musician, VOICES (Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Poets Against the War, among many others.
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