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Wednesday, August 13, 2014

OCCUPIED LANGUAGE

by Chandramohan S


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The adjectives were abandoned
Suffixes and prefixes scrambled
Vowels lynched and hung upside down
Epithets beheaded
Remnants from shattered strings
Conjoined for a synthetic memory

The unoccupied portions on the
Map of alphabets resemble
A Hieroglyphic of colonial logic symbols,
The refugees flee through edited check-points
And seek asylum in an alien tongue
Bleaching through barbed wire fences of apartheid
Abbreviating their surnames and
Dislocating their punctuations
Silencing their phonetics in sound bytes
Stripping bare the sterile meat of
An evacuated language


Chandramohan S is an English poet based in India. His poems reflect the socio-political struggles of the marginalized, the working class and the nomadic outcasts of the world who are victimized and then forgotten as nations clash and wage relentless war. His work has been profiled and/or published in New Asia Writing, Mascara Literary Review, About Place Journal, Counter-Punch Poetry, Thump Print Magazine, The Sentinel, American Diversity Report, Poetry 24, Green Left Weekly.