Poems published in September 2020

Melange

a poem by Aanavi Malik

Do you remember the strike?
The one time you sent your hands flying
The shape of your paw
Hand
Moulding the pad of fat on my cheeks
Into the surface of a potato chip
A carpet of blue

Where no tomato fluid goes
A bursting of vessels
Ear music
Not so much music, as noise
Not so much noise
As the ringing of a telephone
I pick up (of course)

Hello, I say
Do you feel me?
One minute, wasn’t I vertical
When did my inclination change?
I must be the spoke of some wheel
Spinning back to the same strange sadness
Over
and over
and over and over

Suspended into space time
Like a planet of
No known constitution
Is that all there is to poetry?
The reminiscence of
a childhood trauma.
Of evil.

Every time the shadow beckons
I put forward my limb, limp, pathetic
Toss you the blade
Bend my neck back wards
(or maybe forwards)
I shed no tears
“No”, I whisper
“You cut”