Of Commitment
The golden dinar was the last token of love that you gave me in Varanasi.
The Platypus had become an extinct animal by then,
Hovering through the ash-laden insurgencies of the mind.
You have been committed in the autumnal soliloquies
to rest and take refuge in the veracity of the ash-laden soul,
to plunge into the mayhem my body caused,
to enlighten the ragpicker afternoons
who sat on concrete evenings of mirth and melancholy
As the Ganges glowed with the magic wand of your commitment.
What could it ask for?
Betrothed to the pungent layers on time's tongue,
Gyrating its motion through the dazzling monopoly of our commitment.
The golden autumn flush was the last token of love that I gave you in Varanasi.
Sucking your elixir with the forked, sandstone tongue of my claustrophobia.
Claustrophobia
That morning when mother was enveloped in the blue-grey sheet of the hospital bed,
I became a fish, a slippery fish flapping the maroon-red fins inside a bucket full of trauma.
The water of trauma, my veiled gas bladder, spleen and ovary deranged by the potholes filled
with congealed blood on mother's arms…
I was still a fish, smelling like a soddy, scaly, hoary puppet of time,
Mother's hand embalmed with the bitterness of nostalgia, creating riddles in the groan of her
midday sun,
Her hands became the ladle with which she fed me the payasam on my birthday,
Her hairs became the conchshell evening of Puri when dainty dusk dawdled into the caves of
Konark,
Splashing the tinctured sunbeams on frothy banks of the Chandrabhaga.
I was a jocund fish now, turning and tossing into the bosom of knight with a pounding hammer,
Specks of sawdust on my nostrils, in the realms of chromatic neon lovemaking,
My shallow fins juggling inside the bucket, in love with a divine claustrophobia,
Till I stopped breathing in the refrigerator and the morning swan swaddled my mother back
to life!
Of Violence
You could come and eat me as a platter, strawberry nights nestled in the parting of my thighs,
Water of my eyes decorated with rose petals,
my wounds layered and frilled with Parmesan cheese to stop the blood of violence from trickling
down;
You could enjoy my cashewnut breasts, with future hopes for a torrential downpour of milk
to tickle your tastebuds.
My love, you could have torched down the labyrinthine mazes of my body, and gobble up shreds
of meat, lumps of bottlegreen vegetables in the sylvan landscape of the furrowed land,
You could lick, relish and cultivate the seeds of violence into me -- plummeting down the peninsula
To discover liberty cap mushrooms here and there,
Or traversing the canal under my belly,
Fuming with nutritious potion for the generation to come.
You could spruce up my meat with a huge conflagration, a charcoal-fire to burn and boil me,
Making me more appetizing to the drought-devastated mouths,
Like the bruises of your violent love had already done.
Sreetanwi Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University Kolkata. She is a bilingual writer published in Ekdin, Uttarer Saradin, Asian Cha, Poetry Conclave, and many more. Her recent work includes 'Of Dry Tongues and Brave Hearts' (Anthology, English, Red River Publication) and a translated short story in an anthology of Kazi Nazrul Islam's short stories, a project from Kazi Nazrul University (Orient Blackswan).
