ATHARVA DESHPANDE

Best Kitchen Porter 

I needed money. London doesn’t care, rent’s a vampire
and i was fresh neck. 

found a bar shift on stint.
walked in pretending i gave a damn
about wine with names
longer than my immigration queues at Heathrow. 

learn the grape,
learn the village,
learn the farmer’s dead grandfather,
all so some lord in Westminster can pretend
he tastes history in his mouth. 

i smiled,
poured,
bowed like a well-trained dog. 

their teeth were whiter than my future. 

when the party died,
they tossed me to the back, dishwashing,
the trench,
the hellhole,
the immigrants graveyard. 

met a Zimbabwean man there, fifteen years
in that steam and stink,
hands wrinkled 

like old leather. 

no pity in him, just tired honesty. 

he looked at me once, just once,
and said: 

“You don’t have the skill to be a kitchen porter.” 

imagine being told
you’re not even good enough
to wash someone’s dirty plates. 

then he showed me trophies, best kitchen porter,
four years straight,
metallic proof. 

i broke ten plates,
cut my hand,
smelled of strawberries, bleach,
and another man’s victory. 

ten hours.
one hundred twenty pounds. 

a whole day of my life for the price
of dinner in the same building. 

i staggered out
and bought a Mont Blanc pen 

and wrote this poetry. 

Atharva Deshpande is a poet, writer, and actor from India, currently based in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Alongside his work as a product manager at Parker Hannifin, he writes poetry shaped by the tension between emotional life and modern systems. His first book, Begin Again, was among the early poetry collections in India to consciously blend Hindi and English. This is his second book of poems. He also works as an actor and screenwriter. His work is drawn to themes of love, displacement, identity, and what remains unprogrammable in the human heart.