My middle name Prakash banished, I suspect, must have somehow entered
a forest, but was handed back by a deer on a night of furry autumnal glow,
its mouth leaning in through the window, almost whispering to my ears— hey,
I found a possession of yours crawling up my back for a seat. But what was I doing
at the window? I hadn’t desired a sky in years. At my last performance, just before
walking out on stage, I spilled a jar of mustard oil on my jeans. I didn’t have the time
to corrupt the viscosity spread with water; I was congratulated for the daring fashion
statement the fabric of my glistening crotch made. I was sure to grab headlines
had it not been for the protest of broadcasters that night. Technically, an opportunity
lost is not a loss. But the rulebook of capitalism states otherwise. The stock market
boomed daily for 3 years; the link between my salary and the economy remained
elusive. Mutual funds were subject to market risks; I grew wary of thieves. My mind
taken off things when the deer visited again, the dalliance of the handsome creature
with the dispensed mass reinforced its meaning— in Sanskrit, Prakash means light.
Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, The Boiler, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review and The Journal among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack, Odisha and now lives in Bangalore. He tweets at: @satya043