The Brooklyn Rail

MAY 2016

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MAY 2016 Issue
Poetry

Twelve

 

(mango)

Soft directions
meet and mesh
a rock formation


will surpass any scripture.

The most primitive fruit
is the shape of a heart
gone hard.          Fossils follow

a ghost in the dirt.

A householder
who is a true devotee
lives in this kingdom of
tracing patterns.

 

 

Unparalleled study of
          muscular activity.

Generating heat
           but no waste.

Heightening visual acuity 


are colored oils
in the cones of the retina
swans & eagles use

for springs unattached
to the nectar of
whom do you say you return to,
with your eyes closed,
when no one else is awake?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scene Three

 

A honey leached through the living.


 

A flood leads to remarkable fertility
in a cage
to protect the heart; a kind of glass
used for domestic purposes
remains engrossed with the reflection.

Most sensitive messages don’t trigger a response.

 

Breaking the shell of glass, the reflection
begged the Master to keep him alive

as possible by the waves, the many colors

The Master makes his own, there are
different colours because it is contact with the

thousand petal really black Lotus             floats
sometimes Mine, sometimes not

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scene Four

 

The colour provides a continuous network


Trapped in his name, the sea was
millions of messages crossing

    “drama of the body.”

“The obviously analogy is
with saying

this is that which has no colour of its own

and is true for all nights
but not the ones that follow.

And it thus follows tha
in repeating the name you
get closer to the formless
way it acts

with your eyes closed may appear
without attributes and release
from the heat of currents dispersed

across great distances

an unified body

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scene Five

 

Drops of water
gather his name
on a red-hot frying pan.

The people realize
he looks out of the world
into the mouth of the unknown 
& exclaims “Ah!

Gives up intimacy
to light the path of 
a more pleasurable science

after pondering over the image
when his mind is on the wave
may just produce a mild sound
but leave no wake?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An ordinary fly
yearning for honey

calculating difference
between shade
and shadow

from the flowers

unattached
to vegetables

his companion
word    ‘alone’,
‘only’. ‘
nothing else’ etc;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scene Six

 

Smoke soils the wall at the temple, was

resting after his noon meal, in the afternoon, A

bout the sun in them the Encyclopedia says,

“Smoke is the visible product that appears to be 

emanating from breathe. But how else

does the body say ‘I am Him.’           This

‘O Jamuna. If I have not eaten anything to-day, then
may your waters part so that we may all walk to the other

end of sorrow

and think that the self is dead

can a man be sure about that? We are fooled by the
combustion that is carried away by a current of gases and

resting after his noon meal. In the early afternoon, N.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spider and its Web

 

In the early evening, had been discussing
regarding the sports in our arteries
& ejected in an excited state
a field of snow, in which playing,
sensations swirl and form that
unchangeable
act of kindness

emerge as
Spiders that make many uses of silk glands +
don’t throw away the unbroken black sky
which provides silk towards
the ease with which
the spider moves over the field
causes to understand the infinite
through our limited mind.

 

That he is both instrument and matter. One web,
the thread on which the young ballooning spiders
migrate
is both amazing and difficult to understand
but a closer look at the dark and you see
he is none other than
what dwell in the devotees
after touching the web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erode

 

The horizon fractures
the eye into events.

Streams of water during a heat wave
like mica sparkle against the black ground.

Quartz, grains of sand
consist largely of ancient rocks,
a watery fruit

weathering the bulk of what moves freely
amongst crystal structures

as milk we thought he was drinking.

Emit

an ash

into the air,

causing a stir among the believers

who’d been waiting for proof
that he listens to you

and was thus alive,
or will forever live,
like any other stone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shale

 

Dip seaward

spill     into a mosaic

on the cross-vein    seam

of sun stone

upward flourish
of an undercroft

effects of the wake
reveal no oar but
a pattern beneath

 

vortex in the eye prevails
deepening the green easterlies

steered by adjacent fires
an electronic river

restarts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thunderbolt

 

The prolonged rain
          on a slopping curve
                    is the vehicle
                              that incarnates as
                                        slow drifting story.
                                                  Whereas the white horse it hunts is an individual
unable to make up its mind. Acting often, on opposite effect, a weird wind
between a horse running wild and the rain                              is a bolt trapped
                                or otherwise              how i’ll be able to trace
                                shallow seas                        dare not disturb.

                              When you are asleep my skin absorbs the sun
retains a certain landscape.          The way it melts          is the opposite of how you
          open your eyes in the morning                    unable to differentiate between
                    the warm presence                    from this ice age
                                     made possible             by a single event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Satellite

 

  each name                              thinly about                              voices connect
continents
                                                  perched by the water
                                                            the life it will take
                                                                      to another movie
moving                                                            (in
                        across the skies                                              your hand)
                               if you close your eyes                                       who died
                                        when no one cried                                                  were
                                                        this time                                                 a coincidence
                                               as if the screen                                 could not withstand
                                                                                unseen          still          blinded
                                                                      by our disbelief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

piple, shiprock

 

                                       Carved a pattern
                            with the caliber
                                 of a geometry.


          An echo unreturned
twice the days
         it rained on an address
                                arrived at
                         wrapped in letters
                     like weather ricochets


                     patterns on paper that
                   guide our conversations


to the road you drive through
                  in your sleep of
                           116 nights
                     dressed in the fall
                                       a birthmark
                        to become

                  the best example of
                            abyssal histories.

 

 

 

 

Contributor

Biswamit Dwibedy

Biswamit Dwibedy is the author of Ozalid (1913 Press, 2010) and Eirik’s Ocean (Portable Press, 2015). He guest-edited a dossier of Indian poetry for Aufgabe#13, published by Litmus Press, and HarperCollins will be publishing his next collection in 2017. He has an MFA from Bard College, New York. He is the editor of Anew Print, a small-press devoted to translations and reissues, and is the Director of the Anew Writing Program, a low-residency, non-MFA program in India. He splits his time between Mumbai and Bangalore. 

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The Brooklyn Rail

MAY 2016

All Issues