Three poems from My Body is not a Vessel

Shamayita Sen

Stasis

 

Sweat smear on a cloud-clad autumn sky, an eternal wait — and, I know I’ve lost to Time, this summer, as I continue grazing on fields. But Baba used to say, Nothing is lost in waiting, and the best emerges in patientdeliberations. Just like grandma would wait on orange peels and potato slices to dry, or pickled mango to accumulate all the sweetness of the world, to take them home as gifted scents. As I internalise the structures of this world, wonder what might happen if I laze a while longer, and ruminate on the movements of celestial bodies, my reverie breaks. I open my eyes, and I’m only a speck of dust on floating cumulus clouds.

 

afternoon sun

shimmer on the remaining

strand of spiderweb

 

While Writing on Motherhood

 

I sit on haunches

painting toe nails while

futile thoughts and half-baked

poems on motherhood

taunt me.

 

I scratch my head.

Snowflake memories drop,

cascading my lap. A garden of

raked up childhood images

awaits final edits.

 

Eid ka Chaand

 

The moon, now

a new-born’s cradle,

now the hanging guavas

of my pock-marked breasts,

is the measurement of time

away from you, the bulging

distance gnawing between

your continent and mine.