Hrishikesh Srinivas
Yellow before bells
Travelling as their feet would take them and with an otherly lightness of heart, they found a gentle ascent from the vale. Pressing on, they came to a merely bland view from where they could see a splitting off to a narrower track up ahead and not much else. They decided to stop then and feel the air skip between their hairlines while they considered.
“We should stick to this route,” said one who felt heaviness return almost immediately.
“Then we’ll never know what could have been that other way.”
“That will happen regardless of which way we take.”
They felt the ghost of a group pass them by from the opposite direction, flutters of an annunciation. The inspiration seized a few of them but blindsided none.
“What if we go down just a little that way?”
“There’s no guarantee we’ll know any better further on, and we’ll have to come back up.”
“What if some of us went some of the way and came back?”
“Then the remaining will have to agree with them without seeing it for themselves, while they’ll exhaust themselves there and back.”
The spirit party papered on.
On the nose
Geppetto dreamt that his boy puppet’s nose would no longer grow when he lied. At first he felt a great sense of relief, as if something marvellous had been achieved. No more agony over that stark, shameful birthmark of his boy that wasn’t really his. Immediately after followed dread about the implication for his morality. Without the growing nose to keep him in check, would he succumb to the worst of his nature and of those around him, reckless and playing fast and loose with the truth? Would he no longer heed The Fairy, without the physical discomfort of the growth and its very literal measure of his depravity, along with the subsequent shortening process? How would he even be aware of his erring? How would he learn what needed to be learnt, rather than his own pretexts? Surely not by random pecks delivered at the mercy of the season and time of day. With such heavy doubts at the heart of his dream, Geppetto was overcome by deep sadness and felt his insides writhe even as he dreamt himself coming up with ways to test his boy’s nose. Had it really lost the power to grow when he lied? Perhaps he could conspire to make him tell a very obvious lie, or at least a lie known to him beforehand, and see if the nose didn’t grow. As he was pondering the right way to approach this determination came knocking at his door some visitors from the village, who had decided only then to pay attention to the solitary carver. After opening with tacitly accepted pleasantries they remarked that the puppet’s nose was looking in excellent condition these days and wondered aloud if he had trimmed it down so. And his dream self thought to himself just as he awoke: why pay so much attention to the way of least resistance in undertaking when so much more must be undergone?
Darlings
They had been together since the heady long and full days of learning themselves. Whatever they were, they were no more. There was no more to be said between them, but even if there were it would have none of the same import as it might have had, had once, or had then. The places they had shared became inhospitable to them. The place they held for them crumbled. The worst was knowing them now with others, in others, a snide reminder, subtle yet blatant a jab. Still, despite each of innumerably many such moments and stretches of time, despite the plea why hast thou forsaken me? keeping restful nights at bay, despite memory and longing rearing hope yet again, they had the presence of mind and magnanimity to feel for them, wherever they were. They harboured the righteous notion that they, too, deserved peace and good, and tried, as best they could, to dispel whatever they were.
Hrishikesh Srinivas hails from Sydney, Australia. He is a science and engineering graduate of the University of New South Wales and Stanford University. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, with poems appearing in issues of UNSWeetened Literary Journal, Hemingway’s Playpen, Otoliths, Mantis, and Meniscus. He was awarded the Dorothea Mackellar National Poetry Award in 2011 and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Youth Award in 2013, also being included in the 'Laughing Waters Road: Art, Landscape and Memory in Eltham' 2016 exhibition catalogue.
Yellow before bells
Travelling as their feet would take them and with an otherly lightness of heart, they found a gentle ascent from the vale. Pressing on, they came to a merely bland view from where they could see a splitting off to a narrower track up ahead and not much else. They decided to stop then and feel the air skip between their hairlines while they considered.
“We should stick to this route,” said one who felt heaviness return almost immediately.
“Then we’ll never know what could have been that other way.”
“That will happen regardless of which way we take.”
They felt the ghost of a group pass them by from the opposite direction, flutters of an annunciation. The inspiration seized a few of them but blindsided none.
“What if we go down just a little that way?”
“There’s no guarantee we’ll know any better further on, and we’ll have to come back up.”
“What if some of us went some of the way and came back?”
“Then the remaining will have to agree with them without seeing it for themselves, while they’ll exhaust themselves there and back.”
The spirit party papered on.
On the nose
Geppetto dreamt that his boy puppet’s nose would no longer grow when he lied. At first he felt a great sense of relief, as if something marvellous had been achieved. No more agony over that stark, shameful birthmark of his boy that wasn’t really his. Immediately after followed dread about the implication for his morality. Without the growing nose to keep him in check, would he succumb to the worst of his nature and of those around him, reckless and playing fast and loose with the truth? Would he no longer heed The Fairy, without the physical discomfort of the growth and its very literal measure of his depravity, along with the subsequent shortening process? How would he even be aware of his erring? How would he learn what needed to be learnt, rather than his own pretexts? Surely not by random pecks delivered at the mercy of the season and time of day. With such heavy doubts at the heart of his dream, Geppetto was overcome by deep sadness and felt his insides writhe even as he dreamt himself coming up with ways to test his boy’s nose. Had it really lost the power to grow when he lied? Perhaps he could conspire to make him tell a very obvious lie, or at least a lie known to him beforehand, and see if the nose didn’t grow. As he was pondering the right way to approach this determination came knocking at his door some visitors from the village, who had decided only then to pay attention to the solitary carver. After opening with tacitly accepted pleasantries they remarked that the puppet’s nose was looking in excellent condition these days and wondered aloud if he had trimmed it down so. And his dream self thought to himself just as he awoke: why pay so much attention to the way of least resistance in undertaking when so much more must be undergone?
Darlings
They had been together since the heady long and full days of learning themselves. Whatever they were, they were no more. There was no more to be said between them, but even if there were it would have none of the same import as it might have had, had once, or had then. The places they had shared became inhospitable to them. The place they held for them crumbled. The worst was knowing them now with others, in others, a snide reminder, subtle yet blatant a jab. Still, despite each of innumerably many such moments and stretches of time, despite the plea why hast thou forsaken me? keeping restful nights at bay, despite memory and longing rearing hope yet again, they had the presence of mind and magnanimity to feel for them, wherever they were. They harboured the righteous notion that they, too, deserved peace and good, and tried, as best they could, to dispel whatever they were.
Hrishikesh Srinivas hails from Sydney, Australia. He is a science and engineering graduate of the University of New South Wales and Stanford University. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, with poems appearing in issues of UNSWeetened Literary Journal, Hemingway’s Playpen, Otoliths, Mantis, and Meniscus. He was awarded the Dorothea Mackellar National Poetry Award in 2011 and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Youth Award in 2013, also being included in the 'Laughing Waters Road: Art, Landscape and Memory in Eltham' 2016 exhibition catalogue.
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