SATYA DASH

In the throes, my only resolution is not to have one

The poem started as way to reckon with the paradigm of the senses, a passage of feeling to any awareness the mind steps towards. Imagine opening a Narniac door and stepping into a fractal room. At any given point the room of this human condition is overwhelming, but through time, we unconsciously imbibe labyrinthine aspects. Consequently the next door opens from a subversion of the current room, ensuring the muscular presence of the infinite in our loves and lives. The title is the fuzzy realization the poem arrives at through its meandering course. Like Mary Ruefle says, “The difference between myself and a student is that I’m better at not knowing what I am doing,” this poem tries to get better at not knowing what it’s doing. If the entire point of dancing is the dance, the poem in a way enacts the liminal mechanics of the dance moves.  

what compares with the soft notes of a beloved’s confession
dark crush of grapes
                             on the ocean’s gushing skin perhaps     I blame    my
                                                            imagination for heartache at times
ambition wrecks me you say your celestial mouth
overcome     by the acreage of face

                     thought is no silk petal my mind no ilk metal glints metal
                                                                                                   spark owned
by light us owned by reception   I console   quote Plath for a
noble distraction
                  despite its fundamental veering illuminates not in light but
                                                                                    sensation    for years

in the face of bafflement I looked at my mother for distraction
now in the immediate
                                       aftermath of shocks    a kitchen burn seasonal
                                                                 disenchantments minor (major)
anguishes    I call her to receive the great pleasure of classifying
wounds     christening

                     a site offers a chance to return as tourist later     if you’re
                                                                            fond of lurking as a ghost
you’ll start loving white hairs soon    I don’t think I’m there
yet     the milkman leaves
                           a happy birthday note at my door & I’m left with milky
                                                                         tears for a caterpillar’s bath

what one chews is the holy harvest of another     in nature neu-
rons scatter longing
                         that delight so often masquerades as embarrassment
                                                                           saddens me     am I wrong
to think I would eat more fruit if I knew its source
perhaps     could knowing lie

                             not in measure of a pendulum’s amplitude but in the
                                                                            hypnosis of a bob’s swing
perhaps     incantatory your gravity beckoning mine here’s my rest-
lessness     drinkable
                            as an after-dinner poison even saints drink their own
                                                                                  sweat for a promotion

to God     my mother fasts for my father’s long life good health
sharp mind
                      my father snores deep for exactly the same reason     to
                                                                            explain any of this beauty
you must lie comatose in wonder     nearing orgasm I see in the
distance the belly’s

                              delicate lilt     a wave about to break into tide a limb
                                                                quivering like a bamboo leaning
towards a cyclone’s name   it’s you my eyes rumble for     for you’re
a thousand parts

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 Orison Anthology, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack, Odisha and now lives in Bangalore. He tweets @satya043.