I saw no storm—that, which stirred a clatter
of bones and stems, up from unrooted days
in skies of plains where families gathered
and harmonized pain and triumph—in skies
of plains where wolves and crows laughed
in madness about trivial natures of precipitation,
a bird and a bird huddled around a rain—
each beat of a drop vibrated inside glass earths.
When a world wrestled with its own kin
and feathers from ancient veins fluttered
among present skin and tissue— where puffed
chests of tides arose upon a land thirsting
for a simple caress, a touch—this, a time of nails
and tin—a forest of heavy leaves, deluged
with sounds of evocation, an echo into hollowed
mouths carved with our own axes, axes once held
by streams of our own, a measure and meter—
we saw our chimes pat softly against a wind so silent.
I saw no storm—I’d rather none, at sea
or shore or in my mind where once a farm tilted
just a bit, a head lived like stubborn horizons
where layered clouds breathed into our past—
gave rhythm to our tongues in search of teeth,
to clasp upon and remember a cow grazing alone,
overhead a sun—perhaps our own—shifted,
a glance: a roof with no house—a house and a storm.
Shome Dasgupta is the author of i am here And You Are Gone (Winner Of The 2010 OW Press Contest), The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), Anklet And Other Stories (Golden Antelope Press), Pretend I Am Someone You Like (Livingston Press), Mute (Tolsun Books), Spectacles (Word West Press), and a poetry collection, Iron Oxide (Assure Press, forthcoming). His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hobart, New Orleans Review, Redivider, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing, Parentheses Journal, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at http://www.shomedome.com and @laughingyeti.
Illustration by C.B. Auder.
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