Debasis Mukhopadhyay

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Notice to rebroadcast

O Sultan mine, I just read your poem Notice to recast where looking on your flowerpot sky you feel the smudge of my absence on your skin. You hear the train behind the fence, you hear the rain in the kitchen and you are reminded of the necessity of touch. Several lines down you say, “I heard it and I heard it again. A song that stayed unopened in my throat.” Honestly, I am never very sure how your poetry works on me. You could hear everything : the rainstorms behind the kites, the pantomime in the trammels, the trampoline behind the rampages, the songbirds in the pantechnicons… everything across your roughcast of solitude. And everything reminds you of everything, from windpipe sonata to wingspan of a pansy. I wish I could understand how you napalm me while I sleep. As if just like my body my mind also can’t shake you and always awaiting you in bed unopened. True that poetry never sucks and the blancmange sloughing in the overdone ruts between my thighs. Sultan dear one, my husband, my boyfriend, my needleman of tournament, my winger right to left, my slaloming tramline behind my fertility, my panegyric of fucking superintendent, why can’t I understand your poems? Or why can’t I just write a poem that is what when my handgun trades the simile of blankness? But that won’t make it all right. No point in blitzkrieging to unbalance the brain. Let’s think about honeyed baklavas and listen to balalaikas. If you are my bloody bastard, I remain your bloodied bitch.

dictionary of polarity

… called placebos
… called clusters
… called breastbones
… called damningly
… called woolen starlets
… called cloudbursts
… called blueprints bluebells bluebirds

… called hieroglyphs & happy hours
… called cliffs & climes
… called plasticine & placenta
… called fingermarks playing the ethics of emptiness
… called lipstick shoreline & etymology as a notion
… called clavichord & voiceless liquids
… called seedcakes & secretive cherub
… called lollipops & policy
… called clown’s play & poinsettias
… called schoolgirls & dead marionettes
… called charabanc honking & nincompoops’ bolero at stop sign
… called coagulate & euphemism
… called imbroglio & heart-to-heart ventriloquism
… called boa & bole
… called schizophrenic smooches & evasion of clitoris
… called lithography & wispy bricks
… called scourge of polarity & scorpion
… called what-the-hell-do-they-all-do-here

a woodwind dampers or a sweetened slash

Loo my gazelle
my wisp lapse of where I stand
my bare hands on the whispering rivet of sweepstakes
my look-alike roan of missing you
my clump of look out for
my once straitjacket sweetheart
my lapwing across the window of mizzle
my whittled fingerprints on
my clove of geisha clue
my wodge of withdrawal
my fuchsia magellanica

this is not a witch-hunt
a witticism crossword promising you sweet gemstones
or firebombs’ tapestry across the wimp
this is not the footmarks of weaklings swelling across the gelatin slag
the yellow heartthrob of a lonesome wraith in your orange sorbet
another whizzing strait of missing you
the genealogy of dairymaid sweetmeat across the slash

just larval loll
just sycamore leaves swiveling against the backcloth of a fugue
just a whorl of bread crumbs
just a lasso
a strap sans stratagem
swirling birds finding their way in the gas tappet
just tapeworms daydreaming of wingspan on their footpath sickbed
just another dagger swaying inside a whodunit
just a minim in the data cluster

this is far from the lost cloudbursts
the fallen ramparts on the fallen leaves
the waxwork of footfalls slaloming
the whiteout of longing
the aftertaste of long gone clutter of clouts

this is just the wishbone you’d left me with

–from inside the window-dresser where you’d forgotten the clown Loofah

Debasis Mukhopadhyay’s recent poems have appeared in various journals & anthologies including The Curly Mind, Algebra of Owls, Erbacce, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Words Dance, Voice of Monarch Butterflies. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net. A chapbook of his work entitled kyrie eleison or all robins taken out of context is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in September 2017.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.