There is a desire sometimes that one will travel back in time to negate. The blackberry bushes being manicured. The mowing of the lawn killing the wild flowers. The moment of conception. A meteorite hitting this earth. A word spilling out. Deferring the continuous future into an uncertainty, this desire owns nothing and is not indebted to anything. Besides a possibility of a different truth.
Susmita Paul
Susmita
Susmita writes poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction in English and Bengali. "Poetry in Pieces" (2018) is her first self-published chapbook and 'Himobaho Kotha Bole (When Glaciers Speak) is her first book of Bengali Poetry published by Kaurab (2019). Her recent English writings are forthcoming/ published from/in Geetanjali and Beyond, Indie Blu(e) Publishing, The New Amrita Bazar Patrika, Montauk, Plato's Caves online, and, Poetry and COVID. She is the Founding Editor-in-Chief and Poetry & Art Editor of The Pine Cone Review. www.thepineconereview.com She lives with her husband and their 6 and half year old son in Graz, Austria.
The Help- hour 14
Beyond the solidarity of the womb, is a silent necessity to be nurtured-
A sapling needs the flare of the sun from a distance, the ritual of watering with precision and the invincible air that is an unrequitted love.
The polar bear is left alone by its mother after a period of protected nourishment. To allow the solitary walk is resilient nurturing. Protecting only until there are the necessary wounds and you learn to heal.
For, each flight is a reverberation of a faith that nurture instills in you.
Properties of interactions-Hour 13
The church bell smothers the chirping each morning, dangling sounds hang: droplets in the air
Fleeting waves of tranquility hit the badgered soul, transmitting a frequency beyond the holy reach
The quiver in the throat, the silence of the eyes fade into eternity
As one more day dies on this pale blue dot,
Reminiscing the mornings the dinosaurs never had.
The morning after (a zuihitsu) hour 12 poem-poetry prompt response
There are too many noises in the night. Crickets chirp, bloated stomachs growl, sinuses snore.
the front wings are rubbed together and is amplified by wing surface
there is nothing to muffle these sounds
too congested to breathe
Below the belt there’s always stressed skin, leaving impressions
Like a bad headache in the morning.
* the italicised phrases are found phrases
The ear of the needle- hour 11 poem – text poetry prompt response
an eye in one language is an ear in another
Skyscrapers seen through binoculars transform into the cloud of sounds of people working, of machines clicking
The storefront no longer a waiting space in rainy days, instead waves of footsteps drown the entrance
Big black gumboots waddle through the muddy waters, leaving no trace of the slimy sexy skin of the boots
Beyond the difference stands a needle thick eloquence of apathy that streams in our windows – all eyes and ears wide open
A textured silk shirt- hour 10 poem
If you let an ant in through one end of a conch shell, it will come out at the ocean through the other, bloodied, muddy, streaks of sand in its eyebrows
On this piece of silk, they wander a little, walking with more or less steady steps weaving into the fabric their momentous journey
As you sit on the motorbike, hustling through a city between your pyjamas, they spend a sigh of relief as their colony disperse into thin winds of threaded forgetfulness
The morning – hour 9 poem
I look into the night
An abyss and a revelation later,
A vision dawns over the cityscape of dust
The particles of the universe begin to shine through.
As i wait at the bus stop that morning,
Light wedges its way out of me
Until i am the blazing sun
looking down at the bus stop, at me, waiting
For another eureka moment to arrive.
1084’s mother (haiku) – poem 8 based on text prompt
embezzled on soul
a number burns mother’s, charring it-
A diamond history spoken.
* (Hajar churashir ma)1084’s mother is a Bengali novel by Mahasweta Devi.
The missing heartbeat- hour 7
I hear it all the time.
Bequeathed with a lone adage, it appears out of nowhere, melting the arched eyebrows of penance.
Into the melting frost from leaves that let go of a part of themselves in the process, digs the arteries of balance.
There is something missing you say only to collate the nerves of probabilities into a neat pile beside your bed.
From it you draw surreptitiously one of those that echo into the night
Star nursery- hour 6
It could be several eons sometimes
Before they burst out: ants crawling out of dead tadpole bodies
Festive and yet there will be one mourning-
That it was too short a time. Languages
Acquired in those noteworthy moments lost,
Completely, to the bigger eye of things
Where nurseries are but quaint and small,
Diligent in their quiet quarters. Pensive gravel of thoughts
Become sand in the tongue
Unnerving yet brutally true.