Poem
Small Gods Do the Accounts
A poem in the voice of a fictional temple bookkeeper, the same figure who narrates a recent novel.
The oil is paid for. The roof is not, yet.
The rival temple's well still argues with ours
over a boundary drawn in 1911
by a surveyor who is, by now, also a small god.
Nobody asks the accountant to believe in miracles.
They ask her to believe in Tuesdays,
in the specific hour donations are counted,
in a ledger that does not care whose prayer worked.
And yet. Some evenings the numbers balance
too neatly for arithmetic alone,
and she allows herself, just once a year,
to wonder who, exactly, did the carrying.
Note: Written as a discarded prologue to a longer novel before finding its own, smaller shape.
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- The Driver Remembers Differently — Aakash Dev Sharma
- Fourth Floor, No Lift — Priyanka Oberoi