Author: poetryfest

You were always such a pig, all that was missing was the apple between your teeth.
You know I secretly loved it, even with the denial on my lips.
The laughter twinged with truth; we were the only ones in the loop.
I named you Piggy and you didn’t mind; you didn’t even try to change my mind.
Your protest, call me whatever you like “as long as you don’t call me late for dinner.”
Dinner, our favorite thing to do, you chopping vegetables and me criticizing everything.
I love who you are at the end of the night.
I let you hug me with all your might.
You love me the way that God loves the church and that’s alright.
I named you Piggy and you didn’t mind.
I love that because you were mine.

What happened to you?
What happened to the girl who’s curiosity was its guide
Who explored the new ideas of the tide
Who was so unafraid to be who she was
No matter who thought or looked
No matter who judged or dared
To tell her that what she was feeling wasn’t fair
What happened to the girl that stood by her ideals
While recognizing how the world was hurting the people she loved
Who fought for love, who saw that God did the same
Who empathized with the worst
Who prayed for better times
For immediate change instead of immediate sorrow

A youthful girl of music and whimsy
Met with mixed feelings making her dizzy
The embers of the world’s end around her
Jumping into the flames like she’s asked to
Not questioning the burns on her body
As her skin melts away to oily gasoline
That contributes to the fire birthed in empty promises
You’d never ask why the flames were there in the first place nor why you were told to jump into them
The notion of questions a danger
Yet perhaps you do not see
The notions of obedience a heavier danger
A larger weight breaking away the muscles of your heart
Each vein and artery bursting into a bloody river
That drowns you, stealing your breath and your voice

No more melodies to sing
No more harmonies to attempt
Nothing left but sheet music crumpled up and thrown away
You think the fire will bring you warmth and will warm the skies until the rain comes and cools
it all
The rain is not coming
The fire is boiling hot
And as it spreads throughout the forest
It burns us all

I’m disappointed and upset and angry
Angry because I know this is not you
Upset because you cannot oppose it
And disappointed that you’d even think that way at all
I know you won’t vote.
I know you can’t escape
I know you think there’s no point to oppose
What happened to the girl
With music in her heart
And curiosity as her guide?

The girl who asked me to swim
Because she was curious
The girl who asked me about my identity
Because she was curious
The girl who asked me about my struggles
Because she was curious

That girl is dead
Buried away in a grave her own family and system put her into
Suffocating her alive and breathing it thick dirt and moss
Until her lungs did not know what true oxygen was
Only inhaling the fake breath that their new fostered child would breathe

Perhaps deep down
I believe I did not do enough
And feel that, although I did not grab a shovel
I did not bury you away
I still see your blood on my hands
Each and every day.

What happened to you is a simple question to answer, but complex in nature
What happened to you is that you died
And reborn into a cacti to pointy to the touch and uncertain of what would be said
Rather than the flowers that cacti grew
You were reborn into spikes
Prickly and sharp
Yet, deep down, that girl that was a flower is somewhere in there

I know that right now, and possibly never, that flower will never see the light of day.
And when it wilts, what then?
What happened to you?
What will happen to you?

You keep me,
as if I were a monk
inside the monastery of your heart.

You keep me,
as the deepest secret dwelling
in the darkest part of your heart.

You keep me,
as the quickest sentiment sent and meant
to strike passion in your heart.

You keep me,
replaying inside your brain
like the melodic memories
of the best musician of every genre
playing the chords of your heart.

You keep me,
on your fingertips
like a gust of wind
blowing from a second-floor window.

And now that I am gone,
you must release me,
as life has released me inside your heart.

There’s lots of rain outside; been raining since
I woke. And now I sit and write, and hear
the gentle tap each drop produces when
it strikes our roof. Just rain, no thunder near,
no flashes in the sky; just water pouring
free from clouds, all thick and wet, pale gray
and yielding only so much light to shore
up dreams of sunlit afternoons. A day
when hugging cups of cooling tea is all
I plan to do, along with digging through
a book stack, waiting for its turn to fall.
For just as rain falls from the sky, so too
my words fall from my pen, and merge to pools
upon the page, for splashing in by fools.

10/12/12
10/19/12

Anger is the antidote for those scarred souls
Who know the impact of their pain but not the source.

Smacked by the branches of injustice,
They put reason to the side
And chop indiscriminately at all the trees around them –
Forgetting that so long as the roots remain intact,
The branches will always grow back.

Innocence is irrelevant –
Guilty is the charge
When rage is the judge
And the injured be the executioner.
The branches suffer for the pain they reflect,
While the roots take shelter beneath the surface and denounce
The machete-wielding madmen who swing in all directions,
Certain beyond all doubt that each swipe
Brings them closer to the thing they call progress.

Then, when limbs grow weary and trees stand bare,
The madmen delight in their destruction
And applaud their actions all the way home.
While the slain branches lie atop the soil,
Becoming the fuel that those roots need
To grow branches once again.

On this unseasonably cold June afternoon
my door to the balcony frames
a grid of windows and doors
in the building opposite.
We are Harvard, they are Yale,
I wish I could tell you why.

Through the cherry tree leaves, its blossoms thinning,
my daily surveillance: a magpie nest
and a boy at his desk
working at his computer.

Formatting spreadsheets and decks,
clicking menu perhaps only to feel hungry,
or looking for escapes from cells —
maybe a trip to Cornwall?
The weather there must be lovely.

Once, he looked up and at me.
I looked away,
straight into my screen.

Cornwall must be wonderful
this time of year.

I.
I was born between two tastes.
Salt. Bitterness.
No flag for the tongue.
Only a bowl.
Full.
Of memory pretending to be food.
Dida’s saree—mango-skin folding open.
Light hung in neem.
The dusk stirred by her hands.

II.
The spoon—
gleamed like an answer I wasn’t ready for.
Her song crossed rivers.
Not in words. In fever.
Cumin fell like ash
across the borders inside me.

III.
I came blurred—
like something dissolved in poppy.
The marrow of gourd stuck to the teeth of silence.
Sap held the shape of her absence.
Every step—
a prayer that forgot its god.

IV.
Plantain. Lentil.
Soft wounds.
Jacaranda bruised the air.
Violet means something else in exile.
Clove burned under the ribs.
I carried her in my hunger.
Her voice—current, pull, undertow.

V.
Oil wept through neem.
She bathed me in mustard steam.
Spoke in turmeric.
Each taste:
a map
that refused to settle on one country.
A forest breathing from the root up.

VI.
Now the bowl is a silence.
Not empty—just unsaid.
Where is the address of dusk
when no one is waiting at the door?
Does it dream in ginger?
Or does memory
rot sweetly
in the dark?

VII.
The last spoon.
I am not the meal. I am what remains.
Chalice. Vessel.
Her voice breaks into spice,
into shade,
into a home I can never return to
because I never left it.

Notes

1. Shukto:

A quintessential dish in Bengali cuisine, shukto is a bittersweet medley of vegetables—typically including bitter gourd (uchhe), plantain, eggplant, drumsticks (shojne danta), and often flavoured with mustard, ginger, and milk. It is both a taste and a ritual—served first in traditional meals to prepare the palate and, symbolically, the soul. Bitterness here is not rejected but embraced—an initiation into memory, grief, and the complexity of origin.

2. Dida:

A term of affection and respect for one’s maternal grandmother in Bengali. Dida is not just a familial figure but an archive of taste, voice, and survival—a carrier of tradition, a keeper of recipes, a bridge between past and present.

This will be in your Student Opinion Survey

Do you look at a student’s physique
and internally debate their daily diet?

I do not find a student’s forehead attractive!
Where else do you expect me to look?!

Do you assume a student’s intelligence
based on the color or the texture of their hair?

Your exterior choices are a reflection of your intellect.

Do you treat your scheduled classes
as a personal counseling session?

My syllabus breaks the ice
about my academic interests.
Icebreakers are about
my students’ personal lives.

Do you effectively communicate your expectations, procedures,
and policies on the syllabus throughout the semester?

Don’t be ridiculous! You would know
if you looked at the syllabus besides
the first day! It can’t get more effective than that.

Have you ever wondered if you are talking to yourself
when giving a lecture to a full classroom?

The information is best learned when being taught to others.

Do you provide your students with information
and materials relevant to the course goals to help them learn?

My office hours create successful students in my course!

Has a conversation or event between you and a student
taken place during your office hours that you are not proud of?

My office is a ‘safe space’ as the kids say.

Do you take pride in failing your students? Are you proud
that no student in the history of your teaching passed your class?

A’s are not the apples falling from the tree.

Do you believe students negatively critique your classroom
behavior or teaching techniques to your colleagues?

A lie will do one hundred laps around the world before the truth ties its shoes.

Ce qui n’est pas clair est poésie anglaise.

Opacity is à la mode.
Poetry is something you decode.

If you cannot divine the beauty
of turgid verse in airs so snooty;
the fault lies with you.

There is no point,
now don’t you see?
It’s clever: that’s the irony!
Language, butchered — we disjoint,
Who cares what plebs we disappoint?
It wasn’t meant for you anyway.

Line breaks?
Ha!
We make them up!
Voilà —
it’s fake.
You had enough?

And it’s gauche,
don’t you know
to expect poems to rhyme.

To obscure, not reveal.
To demand, not appeal.
The problem doesn’t lie with you —
it’s shit.
Don’t lie —
you always knew.

Though quantum physics may object
i regard you as more
than a tiny burst of light
dashing across my persistent memory.

From the smallest edges of the universe
i would, in fact, like to believe
that you and i are connected
(and always have been
and always will be)
but it’s not because
you’re quanta
and it’s not because
time is relative.

To be a mere fact of life
woven into Indra’s web with you
would be enough for my ego
but i cannot accept
a scientific theory
which reduces you
to a vibrating string
enmeshed in the same matrix
that includes everything else
(which, i’m told
only appears
to be matter).

Since i’ve met you
i’ve known
that You were set apart–
of something more
than the particles
the rest of us are made of.