Murky

God elopes, deer on a fervid tail
A conch ripped, shells in my mouth
Small peanuts are plucked by the grandmother’s nails
Soundboards stocked with a sharp, fang-like dissonance
Rain slaps my face
My nose grows molecular
God, did you pinch my very tongue and scream?
Are you standing, all lather,
in grandma’s petticoat?
Are you the rain?
The marble floor?
My balcony is a ball of black seeds.

split

Orange wrappers. Foil of light. I fish my hand into the cool sigh of a water tank. I wish to elope into the dusk’s quartet. What roams in the blinking eye of the water trunk? The stomach moans and my mouth grows into a rectangle –-a square—an oval gesture. Memory drops from the ocean of the body and wriggles in the trough. I stare at my own face. What roams?— All thick and blurred in the light of the water. My face swims along the comb of waves. I stare at myself and wonder how true this construct is. I swish my hand, and my long face comes apart.

“,”

The light slices the mouth.
Absence fills—cold climate of the body.

Snow— porous sheet. You enter
and leave while my arms

Spin and spin. The days are growing around
my clamp ears. Whirl. Cotton mass.

These days, the skies are punctured.
Nothing grows here. I wake and wake

to the barrenness of my own naked body.
Between my fingers, the sun shreds

the dotted skin. Sleep, you too betray.
Grow around the chin and

gnaw with your new mouth. Everything wants
to claim the syllable of the body.

The pills pop and pop. There is no stopping this
withdrawal of blood.

There is no pausing this curtain of paleness.
I grow around my slime body

and fall further into a comma.

Aakriti Kuntal is a poet, writer, and visual artist from India whose work has been published in various literary journals, including Panoply, Icefloe Press, The Night Heron Barks, and The Hindu. She is the author of 'God, am I your eyelid?' from Sigilist Press, USA. She was awarded the Reuel International Prize 2017, shortlisted for the RL Poetry Award 2018, and nominated for the Best of the Net.