The Hills are alive and Other Poems – Arunima Chowdhury

“Making A lake”

A will to live

A will to die

Give me either

And I shall cry

No more.

How many white nights

Shall I spend

With my wounded body

On these salt flats?

Give me anything

A sigh

A whisper,

We can’t grow blue lobelias

Around my lake.

 

“yolk”

Holding his body close together

Into a hug

Eternal cold

Of his rain-some being

He walks up to her

She looked at him from her darkness

Eyes-

A pair of old slits

On a chalky wrist.

“The Hills are alive”

I am capable of so much bereavement

So much separation

I must fall in love again and again

Cross the tickle

Reach jouissance

I

A woman

I eat mountain mushrooms

And touch daisies

I cook what ever I treasure in

This moment

A ravine between my breasts

Bourbon coaxes

Subdued fire

Smokey sighs of camphor

In a ritual

Of diminished majors

And forgetfulness

As the citylights upturn the sky

You float among the stars then

A naïve boy,

Alone,

By Chagall.

Illustration : Arunima Chowdhury

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