Mukahang Limbu
Poetry is Useless
i
dive into a poem naked
to find clothes too loose
to fit;
a dead grandfather’s batik
shirt buttoned down a
sun burnt chest
your flesh fresh from
the beating of a
drunken dog
plaid shorts hugging
your waist the way
you want
suck in your ass tight
and sway to a rhythm,
you click
your heels – One! Two!
Sometimes a poem is you
dancing alone in your bedroom –
This poem is you in front of the bathroom mirror
with your mother’s tweezer
plucking all the queer out
ii
we are trying to find our way back
to Poetry.
unpack those boxes,
unfold the pages that
broke our
Bodies. we are trying to mend
ourselves from textbooks whose
words taking arms
with pitchforks and butcher knives
sliced our
poetry
Into stone.
MUKAHANG LIMBU is an 18 year old Nepalese writer based in Oxford. He is a 3-time Foyle Young Poet, a SLAMbassador and has won the ‘First Story National’ competition.