Find and share the perfect poems.
A bear brings forth her young informous and unshapen.
I now wear the pelt of the conjured beast around my groin.
I think of new words for solace, one of which is knifed.
We take no form until licked into shape by the tongues of those who love us.
From Arrow (Alice James Books, Carcanet Press, 2020). Copyright © 2020 Sumita Chakraborty. Used with the permission of the author.
Before you begin, please be aware that this track does not end.
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Find a large, unframed mirror. Or, if you don’t have mirrors, find something like one: smooth, flat, and reflective, with superstitions silvered in.
Beat it with the most vulnerable part of your body. If you are having trouble deciding what to use, ask yourself: what would you least want me to touch?
Continue until the mirror breaks. Then, continue until it breaks many times.
The Cry violet, or the Viola cryana. Its purple blooms drew the fingers of lovers and of botanists. It grew in the kinds of rocks we have that are made of skeletons of marine organisms, like mollusks, which are small tender muscles housed in curved shells. We said we needed the rocks for our own homes. They died.
Like oak trees swerving out of the hills
And setting their faces to the wind
Day after day being practically lifted away
They are lashed to the earth
And never let go
Gripping on darkness—Alice Oswald, Memorial
When I picture Robert, he is in the Public Garden,
watching setting suns, like the ill-fated king, turn all to gold.
Robert with the swans. Robert under the statue of Washington.