Rajani Radhakrishnan is a poet from Bangalore, India, whose poems also have appeared in the Ekphrastic Review, The Lake, Quiet Letter, and The Calamus Journal.

Where the Acorn Fell
By Rajani Radhakrishnan

I wondered if she had wild eyes and stole silk sarees from the
old dhobi ghat, showing up demure and alluring at the upper

class table, his gaze never leaving her mango breasts and naked
midriff, while she laughed and looked away as if she couldn’t care

to notice. But grandma didn’t inherit her bohemian soul. She lurked
in the shadows, emerging on the evenings she played the veena

at the cultural centre. There were rumours of a long haired man
with a khadi bag who sat at the back for every performance, but

no one knew his name, we found nothing in her stuff after she
died, though mother could have destroyed it. Mother, who taught

herself to be highbrow, the puritanical Brahmin wife who had more
words for her elusive god than for her manifest children. I watched

the past blur on the walls as the mangy cur draped across a kitschy
cushion yelped and licked himself again. He must have sensed my

distaste, stopping long enough to place a wet reassuring tongue on
my toe. I wondered what his great grandmother would have said.