The Game In Reverse Poem by Taslima Nasrin

The other day in Ramna park I saw a boy buying a girl.

I‘d really like to buy a boy for five or ten taka,
a clean-shaven boy, with a fresh shirt, combed and parted hair,
a boy on the park bench, or standing on the main road
In a curvaceous pose.

I'd like to grab the boy by his collar
and pull him up into a rickshaw -
tickling his neck and belly, I ‘d make him giggle;
bringing him home, I'd give him a sound thrashing
with high-heeled shoes, then throw him out -
‘'Get lost, bastard! '

Sticking bandages on his forehead,
he would doze on the sidewalks at dawn,
scratching scabies.
Mangy dogs would lick at the yellow pus
oozing out of the ulcers in his groin.
Seeing them, the girls would laugh with their tingling sound
of glass bangles breaking.

I really want to buy me a boy,
a fresh, nubile boy with a hairy chest -
I'll buy a boy and rough him up all over.
Kicking him hard on his shriveled balls,
I'll shout, 'Get lost, bastard! '