Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 7, Number 1. May 2024. ISSN: 2581-7094
--- Urna Bose
It’s that
time of the evening when the
golden
orb dissolves into naught and night
has not
yet clenched its fist into descension.
When
someone asks, why I never use the
word ‘dusk’,
shame hangs, a rag soaked
in soot,
on my eyelids. The stink of sulphur
circles
rabid, a vulture lodged in my iris.
Dusk: the
state or period of partial darkness
between
day and night; the dark part of twilight.
Partial
darkness; shade; gloom.
Dusky: a
perfectly innocent, wholly legitimate,
etymologically
sound derivative, till it’s casually
thrown at
you. An able, say-it-all adjective
when they
fumble to nail melanin to crucifixion.
“Chee
babu, kaalo meye bolte nei” - every son
is taught
by his well-heeled mother in my culture,
till the
son turns a marriageable age, and photos
of girls
from respectable ‘bonedi’ families
are
scrutinized with care, followed by a small,
harmless
afterthought. A mere condiment,
like the
sprinkling of coriander leaves on dal.
At this
point, the voice grows soft, a hallowed
whisper
perched at the askance edge of political
correctness.
Whispers, we are also taught in my
culture,
soften the bite to a digestible mush.
A little
clearing of the throat, and then, “Well…
we’d
prefer the girl to be ‘phorsha’”. Tell me, did
Dante
know ‘dusky’ is the colour of purgatory?
Masquerading
as two insipid, innocuous words –
“kaalo
meye” – a slow burn pit. Grafted into my
skin is a
panoramic void - still, frozen, numb.
And a
little crumpled origami bird notifies me
the
golden orb had set long ago on an intangible
heap of
dust motes, the very first time someone
was
sensitive enough to use that progressive,
liberal,
forgiving, kind adjective – Dusky.
*Chee
babu, kaalo meye bolte nei – No son, you mustn’t call a girl dark
*Bonedi –
High lineage, aristocratic, distinguished
*Phorsha
– Fair-skinned
*Kaalo
meye – Dark-skinned girl
Incognito
--- Urna Bose
The
testimonial acid rain of black.
Carved
meticulously by the absent-minded
neurosis
of an inky half-moon.
The
inscrutable complexity upheld by grey.
A bastion
of dependability, in a world of
friendly,
chameleon half-promises.
The
un-opposing un-appreciativeness of cyan.
The smudged
residue when the sunflowers
script a
nondescript demise.
The veil
worn by the shifting grains of beige.
Careless
words stick to the Carter Road gravel,
the
wisdom of the wind, a lipless witness.
The
hollowness of a sullen crater – a banshee
in a
tenantless apartment, its yellow-plastered
haunting sewn
to vacuous walls. And,
I
aimlessly wonder if I’ve told you lately,
that the
crouching, incognito colour of
the void
I call me, is actually, you.
How to
cope with Writer’s Block?
For
Nissim Ezekiel
--- Urna Bose
Tonight,
is a night of waiting.
The moon
leans against my shoulder.
Her wind-fumbled,
starlight languished hair
is too
cliched, too quotidian a muse.
There’s
no greater disdain than the
looming
whiteness of an empty page.
The
fractal slap of mockery, bones to ashes.
Resolve
is a finger-smudged daguerreotype.
Writer’s
Block feeds on my heart for dinner.
Blood for
appetizer. Blood for the main course.
Blood for
dessert. Blood for nightcap.
A
forgotten morsel of ache is left on the
plate.
Its destiny – the giant trashcan on
the
street. Inspiration offers its eyelashes
up to the
pendulating face of a deadline.
Corpse is
a poem inside of me, that won’t rise.
I sit
back in quietude in this waiting room.
The
platform number blurred, the train
anonymous.
The clock - frozen anachronism.
Hope
isn’t a nodding, subservient linearity.
A poem
waiting to be born must be
prefixed
by the blessings of an ancestor
goddess,
named benediction.
Faith is
the amulet of validated musculature.
I
remember that “stanza” is Italian for
a room, a
stopping place, a lodging.
I dip my
toes into the primality of this void,
learn to
trust that it is multitudinous -
a womb, a
belly, a repository, a heart.
And, will
lead me to a tentative, first “stanza”
slowly
opening out into an entire poem.
A poem is
a house, a home, a homecoming.
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Bio:
Urna Bose is an
award-winning advertising professional, writer, poet, editor, and reviewer. Her
poetry has gone viral globally, for five consecutive years. She won various
awards and has been the brainchild behind a vast body of iconic advertising
campaigns. A willing slave to the written word, Urna believes that soulful
poetry and gooey chocolate cake can pretty much fix everything.
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