Author: poetryfest

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.

The trick to being the
popular girl this summer is:
sign a lease to a New York high-rise
with a pool.

In this sweltering
waves of heat,
suddenly,
friends and strangers want to be by your side.
By the poolside.

Watermelon chunks.
Citrus slices.
Sparkling water.
Chatters over the platters.

We stay friends
through the winter,
so we can do it all again
next summer.

The Big Mean Welderbeast charged
at maiden and man alike, it did not care
Its eyes blared white with rage!
Get out of my way, I am coming through
… it dropped its nose … I will not stop for you.
So the crowd scattered, all except one,
a matador who was not afraid
of the monster. He stood his ground,
But still the creature bore ahead
until at the last possible second it came
to an abrupt halt, mere centimetres
from Don Quixotic. Its eyes blared
white with rage! It snorted, it roared …
I’m coming through … get out of my way!
But the matador stood his ground!
The Blasted Mechanical Wallywodge*
owned the road … it did not care
that steel was pitted against bone,
muscle, soft sinew. They could wash the
blood off the hood, and straighten the dents.
Its eyes blared white with rage! But it had
stopped – the best of Bremen Motor
Werks had stopped. It honked. It hollered.
Its eyes blared white with rage! Then the
Matador bowed and said, next time
don’t stop – I’ll end up your ornament
… hood … say hello to the devil!

* wally means foolish, wodge means thing.

But soft this moon lit night
Sits gentle atop the bay
Opposed by Cassiopeia’s might
It whispers … whats it say?

Look down upon its mortal men
Far shores reached by handsome few.
It circles earth but once again
before this month is through.

It brings the surges, mighty wash
to cleanse the kindly soul.
Upon emotive shores are tossed
the gallant, strong and bold.

Betwixt the twenty days and eight
wild ostriches and elephants do roam
Those games that men and woman wait
to play get written up in poem.

The stars do twinkle oh so bright
Each and every one so named.
Their passion do draw us fright
then calmness once they came.

That little death we die
for our two fortune’s sake.
Once more again we try
and pray our efforts take.

So near yet distant can it be
the gentleness of newfound youth
when seventy and two hundred days,
sees grand issuance of human truth.

The other side we dare to hide
we cannot find the words.
In emptiness our hearts abide
the pitied, barren and the hurt.

Yet soft, a moon lit night
sits gentle above the bay.
Behold such beauteous sight
Blue eyes … cast newborn gaze.