Author: poetryfest

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.

n the hush where the mycelium dreams,
Beneath soft loam and twilight seams,
There breathes a pulse, damp, low, arcane,
A whisper sung through root and brain.

Mushrooms bloom like tongues of lore,
Wet lips upon the forest floor;
Their spores drift slow in secret rites,
Laced with dusk and appetite.

A raven calls from branch to sky,
Eyes like wells where shadows lie.
They know the names you do not speak,
The ones that twist when you grow weak.

Red fox slips through briar and mist,
A flame with fur, with hunger kissed.
Their step is stealth, their stare, command,
The forest bends beneath their hand.

And there, where cypress leans and sighs,
Where moonlight drowns in dragonflies,
The swamp witch waits in scent and skin,
Their breath a prayer, their gaze a sin.

They stir the air with clove and rue,
With ash and blood and devil’s dew.
No book can cage the charms they weaves,
They rise like smoke from dying leaves.

They speak in moss, in feathered rune,
By serpent coil and swollen moon.
Their hands are mud, their heart is flame,
They love you, nameless, just the same.

So enter soft, or not at all,
The Green Veil hears, the roots recall.
It takes your truth, your ache, your ache,
And gives it back as something wake.

Dark and velvet, wild and deep,
Where secrets grow and bodies sleep.
Nature’s temple, cracked and raw,
The occult mouth, the endless draw.

My words kiss you without using my mouth
The blank page is the bed, as white as fresh sheets
Imagine: your grip on my waist, navigating me
See me through the words I’ve typed
Are your feelings as palpable as my mine?
Warm my skin with the palm of your hand
Read between the lines, and between my . . .
Mind

I find refuge in an aloof type of love.
It’s finite, like everything that I have ever learned to love in my life.
One day my parents will orphan me,
and the day will linger on,
like me dragging out a vowel
when saying a name
to make the moment longer
never fading
everlasting.

I find safety in an aloof type of love.
Permission to flake when the ship starts to sink.
No guilt. No strings.
Just a surface level exchange
a nod
a stroke
brush by our lips
and then we part ways when the wax hardens
when no one can pretend any longer any of this is normal
to be with one another
without ever getting to know each other.

But then I think of what we could’ve had.
Don’t you want to experience Strasbourg with me?
Do you see the hills out from Hecksher and think
of how much I would’ve loved it?
How much I would’ve loved being there with you for it?
Or the slightest bit that you might want to be there with me
for just one ordinary afternoon.
Rainy or sunny.
Bright or dimmed.

When I visited New Zealand, I thought of an aloof type of love
like a ghost
that follows me
I needed the ghost’s company
more than the ghost would care to haunt me
to make sure my memories are alive
to make sure what we had is real
was it ever real?
Bloody rugby, green trails, and flat white
I wish you were here to rejoice them with me
but we never get to experience that
Just when we scratched the surface
you backed out.
That was enough for you
to know you don’t want
any of it.

Then comes VICE,
a summer in Marina Del Rey
A sunny beach town
yet everything was gray.

I don’t see dolphins in the oceans,
I see an ocean without you.

I don’t see a start to my career,
I see a future without you.

I don’t get to live, really.
Because I kept thinking about how you were missing out
on this part of my life.
On the parties.
On the phony producers.
On the people pleading positivity.
On all the gluten-free meals and fake spiritual gurus,
that claimed to love everyone but only ever loved fame.
You would’ve scoffed at them with me.
So, why were you not?
I seem to forget that you’ve always had the choice
To reconcile,
to rekindle,
But you chose not to.

Life is a choice.
We embrace options
both the road less traveled and worn down paths.
Until
I’m not chosen
Until
I’m forgotten.
Then I protest
in silence
with this poem
that will never meet your eye.

Then I learned more about everything irrelevant
as I grow
How to throw a volleyball
Or to buy stocks and invest in crypto.
I even picked up free diving
tumbled in shallow water
held my breath in the deep end.
And finally learned one thing relevant,
that no one has ever loved me,
Nor have I ever loved anyone.

If I ever want to experience a love
that’s not aloof
I will have to sacrifice
parts of my world
in exchange with parts of someone’s world
even though
it might once again
turn into an aloof kind of
love.