A fox moves past the front porch in slow motion basking
in anonymity’s thrill. This village is used to the blood
of strangers, the trees lurid in shame― rot of festering
green. For a moment, I think it’s a scream trapped in me.
Later I find mosquito blood tracing my palm lines. I try
disciplining all the throats squawking in me. A nameless
animal slowly becomes faceless too. Do you realize it took
me years to get here, move past the vanguard’s realm,
past the hell gates of salt. Yet I forget the tempest of this odd
gathering when breakfast coffee spills into my morning mouth.
What will come of all the lives I never had, those that crossed
and parted for one meaningful narrative. This is the power of one,
you say. As if I stole a glance at truth dancing in the nude.
As if I held light like a hired star to gravity’s wound. I know
there are scandals lurking out here, but I have come to the point
where skin’s nakedness is mere metaphor & that won’t do now.
Here, look, I have no way of telling praying from wanting.
As a child I once licked mud, chewed at its bark of incensed stew.
I think it’s why I have a hard time discarding rubble. To forget
something, I must remember something else. At some level,
I must have deserved your hate but trust me, even hate runs out
in a long stream of gentle cuss. I’m still here guzzling
Xanax in foreign land to keep me sane & you, my dear
are carrying your precious ribcage glued from matchstick
feathers calling out for the warm fingerbread of human touch.
You love this part where I sing the lore of newly birthed water
visiting a deep clenched shore. When I say I’m moving onwards
& upwards, I mean I’m just dozing on the torn end of a flying ribbon.
Satya Dash’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Wildness, Passages North, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Florida Review, Lunch Ticket, UCity Review, and December amongst others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. His work has been twice nominated for the Orison Anthology. He spent his early years in Odisha and now lives in Bangalore, India. He tweets at : @satya043