Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts

They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.

Across the barren land
where blood once played its savage Holi,
the fearless migratory birds
have returned again.

It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly.

I peer at it, nose close enough 

to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant,

inhaling through slightly parted lips

Seen as she’d hung her cranial lantern
from the roof of her step-father’s garden shed,
the parabolic formula was skipped; like two calves, we followed the fence
to the end of the foot-ball pitch.

Behind the block, the night tears in scrub-calls.
Fox kill scores the morning,
ripped by prints in muck.

Stepping into the opposing seat
I smile, and the look I receive
Makes me feel the antisocial one.

Hands said to Head
look what you’ve made me do
it’s not me, Head said, talk to
Heart, that guy’s sick

‘Female singing constitutes a ‘forbidden act’ (ḥarām),
punishable under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code.’