Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 1, Number 1. May 2018. ISSN: 2581-7094
One Day
One
day – infinite
moments not strung
like pearls, no, more
the empty shell, shiny
colours, layered
and still, at last, quiet
enough to notice noises,
empty,
ready to receive:
moments not strung
like pearls, no, more
the empty shell, shiny
colours, layered
and still, at last, quiet
enough to notice noises,
empty,
ready to receive:
Wuhan
What
got me about Wuhan was the windows:
great grey eyes, lobotomised, gaping, gouged
into pale-faced towers that screamed,
all faces are facades, walls
fashioned from cracks and stuff that cracks
or lets cracks happen – lets in and keeps out,
like breathing, like holding
onto breath, like I was holding on
as the plane dipped lower and the eyes, the eyes
drew closer,
staring, glaring, so many of them
lined up, in rows, the buildings, buildings, buildings
with their eyes, eyes, eyes unblinking, daring
me to think
of each dark rhomboid as a life
or three – a family, families filed like documents,
like specimens, filed behind window
after window stacked row upon row… yet, hard
as I thought, I couldn’t quite manage to know
this thing I knew was true – I could only stare
and blink, numb
as the plane’s safety lights
behind my own small slab of transparent protection,
before turning to scroll that other closed window
– the flickering in-flight entertainment screen
with its thousand-plus sonatas
to screen the howls of descent.
great grey eyes, lobotomised, gaping, gouged
into pale-faced towers that screamed,
all faces are facades, walls
fashioned from cracks and stuff that cracks
or lets cracks happen – lets in and keeps out,
like breathing, like holding
onto breath, like I was holding on
as the plane dipped lower and the eyes, the eyes
drew closer,
staring, glaring, so many of them
lined up, in rows, the buildings, buildings, buildings
with their eyes, eyes, eyes unblinking, daring
me to think
of each dark rhomboid as a life
or three – a family, families filed like documents,
like specimens, filed behind window
after window stacked row upon row… yet, hard
as I thought, I couldn’t quite manage to know
this thing I knew was true – I could only stare
and blink, numb
as the plane’s safety lights
behind my own small slab of transparent protection,
before turning to scroll that other closed window
– the flickering in-flight entertainment screen
with its thousand-plus sonatas
to screen the howls of descent.