Lina Krishnan’s poems from CeWoPoWriMoWE 2022, Yugen Quest Review Summer Edition, June 2022

Three poems

Feline Notes

Cats at a bush
Waiting for a bird in paw
Or a frisky squirrel
Don’t bother to look around
Or reply to a “hello there”

But this one did
A single soft miaow, melodious
Sort of said, I’m busy now
We’ll catch up, next time we meet
Without a distracting mouse

Dream Horse

Not the kind that enter your dreams
Nothing as Freudian as that

Merely a schoolgirl joy in horses, reading stories
Where mane and tail and ears feature
Hooves beat impatient tattoos, ready to gallop

And stallions do their round up
Mares give rides to children
Holding the reins, but lightly

Oh that I had a horse of my own
That seems destined
To remain a dream

Pitthoo!

With a run up no less crafted than in cricket
Ker-plonk goes the ball, to knock over
Your seven piece pyramid

While others rush to run you out
Before your team can put back
The carefully gathered triangles

Which you just about manage
By a whisker at times
And stand tall, shouting pitthoo!

Ah,the adrenalin of that moment
The sheer joy that only 
A lovely game can bring!


Mughal memories stirred when one held these few pieces of cold marble stones in a small
palm, calloused from rough games of hopscotch and tree climbs. And always marble;
most homes in Delhi back then had this favorite, the veined beauty of Agra. Finding the
pieces was a journey in itself: to spot a building site, not as ubiquitous in those days. Then
sorting, sifting, rejecting, assessing till those perfect seven triangles were found.
Nowadays, when you can just order a lagori set online, one must miss that whole joy of the
wanderer, the triumph of the hunter-gatherer in finding the right pieces in the rubble and
then building up one’s group pyramid.

Lina Krishnan is an abstract artist and poet, currently dreaming of making a zen garden