Bastard
The sky grew spines.
You came. You spat.
You left.
The knives-selling woman
sat on a blood-wave.
Bereft.
An insect without bite.
Love, leather and light.
Weather-vane vaccinations.
A syringe of expectations.
Beyond it was a square shade
that moved to the rhythm
of a zoo-guilt blade.
Like the white flags,
at noon, on a wedding bed.
Like a hat that’s changed
the shape of a head.
I still hear Ma cry
“Bastard!”
in her sleep.
It was her call to you,
I heard her weep,
Salty God; hole-rich,
an endearment,
like your “bitch”.
I heard her weep.
She let that sound
scrub her insides
till I was found –
a cornice, later a blind,
and she reclined
against that word.
Sumana Roy's first novel, Love in the Chicken's Neck, was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. She teaches at the Department of Humanities, Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College. She is working on a collection of stories tentatively titled SML.
The sky grew spines.
You came. You spat.
You left.
The knives-selling woman
sat on a blood-wave.
Bereft.
An insect without bite.
Love, leather and light.
Weather-vane vaccinations.
A syringe of expectations.
Beyond it was a square shade
that moved to the rhythm
of a zoo-guilt blade.
Like the white flags,
at noon, on a wedding bed.
Like a hat that’s changed
the shape of a head.
I still hear Ma cry
“Bastard!”
in her sleep.
It was her call to you,
I heard her weep,
Salty God; hole-rich,
an endearment,
like your “bitch”.
I heard her weep.
She let that sound
scrub her insides
till I was found –
a cornice, later a blind,
and she reclined
against that word.
Sumana Roy's first novel, Love in the Chicken's Neck, was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. She teaches at the Department of Humanities, Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College. She is working on a collection of stories tentatively titled SML.
