(translated from the original Bengali by Tuhin Sanyal)
REMAKE
The same old story
of the hunter and the prey.
Yet, no spine-chilling
adventure.
Coming out
of the comfort zone.
‘Remake’ is a mockery-mixed
dinner-table.
DEPRESSION
Wooden houses
and continuous days
of prose
are sub-water swims and chairs
laid near the fog,
watching the depression of clouds
forever
is in itself
a single scene.
BIRD AND FEATHER
One should know the...
Sandalwood
Some foundation, concealer
a little rouge
a subtle lipstick
her reflection disappoints
lines, hard earned, unwanted
her reflection smiles
it helps
She dusts and tidies
arranges
rearranges
old photographs
of ghosts
She lights a candle
sandalwood
she vacuums
and sweeps
she polishes
and primps
her home
herself
just in case
Two Scientists
I should be in work
instead, I sit in a Dublin café
tightly clutching a cup of tea
as if it might...
TRIATHLON
Jane was in Vancouver one day and she stood
at the window and saw a woman crawling out
of the sea. The woman started running really
fast on the beach until she reached a bicycle
and then she hopped on it and kept going.
“Wow!” Jane said, “I just saw the evolution
of mankind in...
CREATIVITY
Excogitate a rainbow,
The piebald mind breaks into,
A woolgathering without rains,
On furlough during emphasis,
Precipitation and tedium.
A breakthrough in a belfry,
Is not a quantum of peerless words.
A sockdolager of a man's oeuvre,
Is also a renaissance of mirages.
Scant advertency makes him think.
DEATH
Cessation is a penumbra of the foofaraw.
The patina of sandalwood is...
POTPOURRI
1.
The other day
When we became very political,
We flagged our posts;
After the sabbath,
We put hashtags
On our souls.
2.
We survived like tramlines in the city,
Some parts remained,
Some tracks gone,
Some lines forgotten,
Some kept like tradition.
3.
That plectrum which you held
Between your fingers
And with which you awakened
Fire and ice,
Found that under the mattress,
And you told...
GRANDFATHER
You remember more of what is no more.
Past steps into your bedroom and your grandson
becomes your newly born. You love to address
him as Baba – this is how you called your first born.
The present blurred and faceless has no challenges
for you. Your face perks up and breaks into...
LONGING
How can Kashmir be a hydrogen conspiracy?
the passiveness, the aloofness—the longitude
they search for their wriggled breathing
abandoned history, stooped pride in city squares
what is the DNA of their guillotined blood—
Dalits
they preserve solitariness in a ledge—Dalits
they store pain in their barns—Dalits
and then the masses of the holy land pray
together for the...
Old Men Walk Funny
Old men walk funny with shadows and time eating at their heels.
Pediatric walkers, prostate exams, bend over, then most die.
They grow poor, leave their grocery list at home,
and forget their social security checks bank account numbers,
dwell on whether they wear dentures, uppers or lowers;
did they...
Distant Thunder
I. Monster Mash
My sister noticed first:
“You walk like an old lady.”
I was forty-six, but she was right.
I could not, would not, see.
One day on the beach in Hermosa,
walking along the shore,
I stopped and looked back.
The sea tried to hide the evidence
but I was too quick:
step slide, step slide,...
Writa Bhattacharjee
Fantasy fiction is one of the fastest growing genres in Indian popular culture today. Spurred by access to international books and media, as well as the rise of a new breed of authors, fantasy has been rising in popularity over the last couple of decades. But what exactly...
MOLD
When you left
and I left
When we both left
our glasses
to the loneliness
that'll babysit
our leaving
the place
that has seen
us naked
in each one
of our eyes
There were islands;
green irises & black pupils
they floated the way
we buoyed in that moment
of intimacy.
INCENSE RIBS
I am thinking of you.
Don't move.
Let the cars run over.
Let people walk through.
Let rain...
TO SEE
To see
as I see you,
through beetle eyes—
mosaic percussion
of hundred incarnations,
to see,
as I see you
through strange beetle eyes—
like
strange art
on cryptic flowers,
strange streaks
at strange places.
TO THINK
Like the one
who sits cowered
in the haunt
of the anticipated halt,
mind riveting
like a forced swing,
head synchronized
with the ejaculating bus,
the light of creatures
and things,
passing
in and out
as it...