Satya Dash

one poem

Christening

not so far away tilted by dawn’s gold glinting    your cheekbones made primal music

scab breaking into scowl blinding into smile    like the emergence of a head

from the window of a scarlet cottage    ornament delivered from our first

school the womb    not so far away the woods vanished into a groggy

heart in the middle of the forest    the animals scratched rubbed    whatever fingers

caught hold of    any grub coveted    a square inch of pleasured farm    they ate

for as long as they could    for the tragedy of comparison loomed over them

not so far away    my head in the cleaved bark of an ancient town    a hood of jewels

when the crowd ambushed then passed me through    the by-standers realized vision

wasn’t an innocent thing    at them my tongue hissed like the broken tail

of a tornado    ends I could see but I didn’t know where I began    how could a kink

before my time shape me into shard   so unmistakably hard    a bone-making

machine’s unwavering finish    not so far away in the village fair I met my nemesis

your shadow    I escaped through the temple’s backdoor the priest shouted my name

later I collapsed in your arms I regained my name    its sound now more ravenous

more purple    color enhances desire texture grids character    not so far away I bit

your tongue softly in subliminal envy    for a shock of hot pink recovers

exquisiteness of taste   nowhere to go but corners of pillows mouths drool over   

no authority interferes here    for they don’t know what to do with musk I knew

how to stab demons on my back    a suplex a slash   pristine execution followed

by seductive staring     not so far away behind my mother’s unconscious hand lay

a plaster for a dreaming arm    around the time she woke up not so far away I found

a petal on the road    divorced from its country the lonesome spectacle I slipped

into my pant pocket    knowing fully well the grunge of tidal waves it might suffer

in a washing machine     in that climate of harm every light touch was a small

feast    the love I gleaned I smeared on your face    from not so far away the wolves

came chasing    shreds of tincture on their hysteric lips    to save my salubrious future

I tried to somersault but rejected by gravity     I landed among the stars    below

you kept screaming my name    that’s how I knew I was estranged    for the illusion

of home I made up hunger    somehow I pulled out the dilapidated petal     licked

off its shame    not so far away birds circled over a ravine    wailing hoarse

what sounded like names we had once chosen for our future children

Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, The Boiler, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review, and The Journal, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator, too. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore, India. He tweets at: @satya043.