Sekhar Banerjee

DOT

Sunday arrives - red, worn out, late like a leftover fantasy, or a promise. The market breathes blood and peaches. I run, but not today; there’s a lake somewhere, or the shape of one. The mirror watches, I watch back. I touch the plants. Because they are mine. They don't touch back. God, a difficult hypothesis, has an off day. The butcher's stall is quiet, red-mouthed, headless ­­; plums stare from crates like they know something I don’t. I curse. Six days a week I orbit my own dog-chasing-tail fallacy. I shave for no one, trim what’s already clean. The phone is dead blank. I wear my sexy underwear, still warm from the wash. The light is yellow, too yellow, like old teeth, like hunger. I don’t finish my thoughts anymore. I used to. Even the fish in the lake are unfinished, darting around like loose definitions of a fish. Blood smells like a lesson. Like art class. Pumpkin flesh, peach stone, something ripe collapsing on the tongue. Sunday is a ground zero of fruit and faces, flesh and sale signs. I touch what’s mine to feel real. The treadmill spins like time. I am running. Or not. Even fate is tired. God is elsewhere, in slippers and pyjamas maybe. Their current partner is a geek who swear in encrypted code. They debug together. I eat a piece of something I can’t name - myself, the day, the red, the lake. Nothing remains. Not even a question. Not even God. Not even me.

Sekhar Banerjee is the author of two poetry collections, The Fern Gatherers’ Association and Probably Geranium. His work has appeared in Stand Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Arkana, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Indian Literature, The Lake, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and others. He lives in Kolkata, India.

Sekhar wrote this commentary about his poem:

 I think we amplify nature’s innate violence, still calling it survival. Flesh and fruit, desire and destruction bleed together as we seek meaning while the world watches, silent, indifferent and perhaps largely unfinished. I chose the prose poem form to enhance a gothic feel, leaving little room to breathe.