The green chilis wait
to warm the winter’ silence,
smile on its bleak face
reflecting on our drowsy stillness
dropping our moist clucks
of winter appetite that craves
for the sweet burn on our cold
-dry tongues. A handful, as my
mother makes a cut along each,
the mouths open as babies’. She
stuffs the ajwain, while dipping
each in the soft besan batter, and
drops those saffron-hued bodies,
in the boiling dance of groundnut oil
they drift with sizzling joy, and
the aroma being wafted unsettles to
resettle us with craving gulps of
eagerness to warm our frozen taste
buds. My daughter hops and struts
around, cooing off the moments into
those succulent brown, hardened
chili bajjis my mother serves warming
our frozen taste buds
with each mouthful that
deliciously burns us afloat
into the wrapping cold of winter.
Note: Bajji is an Indian delicacy from the state of Andhra Pradesh
Sreekanth Kopuri Ph.D. is an Indian poet, Current poetry editor for The AutoEthnographer Journal Florida, and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. He recited his poetry at Oxford, John Hopkins, Heinrich Heine, and many other universities. His poems appeared in Arkansan Review, Christian Century, A Honest Ulsterman, Chicago Memory House, Two Thirds North, Heartland Review, Tulsa Review, Expanded Field, Contrapuntos IX, Vayavya, to mention a few. His book Poems of the Void was the winner of the Golden Book of the year 2022. He lives in his hometown Machilipatnam with his mother.
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