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From ULR
Issue 9 – Violence
SLAUGHTER IN THE OFFICE OF A PROFESSOR OF POETRY
A palaeontologist poet unveils poets as instinct's language animals, capable of ancient, beautiful, whispered violence.
June 15, 2023
“With extra words in a short poem,
you can buy a butter knife and a packet of cigarettes, and live among sedentary species happily,”
said Prof. Gooseberry, a palaeontologist turned poet to his students in his Fossil office room.
Among his students were mostly black, white, yellow, brown, mixed-race Hindu humanoids in skull caps.
But there were also a hedgehog, a tortoise, and a water buffalo from the closed abattoir.
Evolutionists may not believe,
poets are the only language animals with omnivorous teeth, more scavenger than hunter. In the cold desert of darkness,
they kill vegan dictators with a neck bite.
At the end of the long lecture on his recent paper,
‘Predatory Transition from Ape to Monkey God’, the professor turned to me and said,
“You seem distracted.
“Want to know how Neanderthal mobs in Bermuda khaki shorts, came on Hero cycles and
lynched sage sparrows in Dadri in the Northern Hemisphere?”
“With a hand-axe, or a club, or a garrotte?” I asked.
“No, you useless Homo Habilis,” said he. “Tell me,” I insisted. “Instinct,” he averred, “How beautiful” . . . I wowed ad nauseam!
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PART OF A COLLECTIONMASSACRE ON THE ISLAND and 2 other poems
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Ashwani Kumar
Ashwani Kumar is a poet, political scientist, and professor whose work has been widely published, anthologized, and translated into several languages. His poetry collections include My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter, Banaras and Other Poems, and Map of Memories, and he is also the author of the acclaimed non-fiction work Community Warriors. He has edited major poetry anthologies, including Rivers Going Home, Scent of Rain, and River of Songs, co-founded the Indian Novels Collective, and edits the Hummingbirds Poetry Series in partnership with Red River. He was also a chief editor of Global Civil Society at the London School of Economics. He has held visiting appointments at leading international institutions, including Heidelberg University, the Korea Development Institute (KDI), and the German Development Institute (DIE). He also writes for publications such as The Indian Express, The Hindu, Financial Express, Outlook India, Scroll, and The Print. He lives in Mukteshwar and Mumbai.