New | Poetry | Atreyee Majumder

PC: Life Magazine, Google Archives

America 

America, summer is here now

Your sobs muffled in flowers now

Lovers kiss on skateboards

And the recession smiles

Your shopping carts brim

Your beards trimmed

Your beaches abound

Your towers aground

Your daddy loves you

Your pajamas are new

Black and blue.

America, you killed the sinner

You washed your hands

You kissed me tender

You brushed

You hushed

Me to sleep.

I memorized my credit card numbers

in my dream

When you fucked me tender

America, summer is here now

I hiked a few miles

to see the world as if I were tall

And then came down

And gathered all my stuff

My credit cards, keys, underwear

Forgot my phone

It rang

In the dream

As you shoved it in

Between

I wore a hat

In the dream

My thrift store dress

On the floor

Of an elevator

America, your big dick

Shrunk

As the phone rang.

Found 

Found in a torn envelope

of ripped-out toenails.

As if a birthday gift.

Unopened.

Rotten with time

but loved still

in hiding.

Through cracks of daylight

and agile cats

and pencil shavings

in bookbinders.

These webs of time,

found in the folds of scarves and hairs.

Your dead toenail

shaved out

in inches, is

now a monument.

   I have Plans

We are the hungry generation

Hang on

We are hungry

Can you hear me?

Line is unclear

Are you home?

I’m home

I’m busy

I have plans

Five year plans

Ten year plans

I have a plant if you will

-     A dead plant.

I type in the comfort of its warm corpse.

Do corpses get hungry?

We are the hungry generation.

We hate you.

Your broken pencil

Bald spot

Tender loving attention

Constitutive openings.

We’ve locked the door of the kitchen cabinet.

The door is locked.

The food is in there.

It rained.

We bled.

There was blood on the dance floor

Time and time again

We played DJ Heebi Jeebie

Some Oriental bullshit

Hungry for music

Hungry for love

Love on the dance floor

Tsk tsk tsk

Love in the time of Hungary.

I was just in Budapest for my honeymoon

The moon was yellow

We bled out some hungry love

At lunch, we parted.

I kept the bangles

They make me hungry

On balmy evenings

I dream of mosquitoes

Some Oriental bullshit

On a four post bed.

I have plans tonight.

  Date Knight

I walk these dunes across the clock

The clock of a millennium

This clock is my friend

My most hearty friend

From the Republic of madness.

For a millennium,

I have been looking for Radhika

Radhika whose braid hung out of the

Calcutta tramline

She had limpid sad eyes

Illustrated by a schoolgirl braid.

It has been many clocks now

I walk in and walk out

Of the many wristholds of Radhika.

The Calcutta tramline is my friend

It reminds me of the many clocks

That burnt out

Running with me.

Thank you clocks,

I say, in dried tears.

I have stopped counting

For counting was my first sin

Never count my friends! Never ever!

O clocks I am sorry

For I tried to use time for counting

Time is the veil of Radhika

The unveiling of which was my second sin

Hey Radhika,

You wanna get coffee sometime?

Anytime, anywhere.

I promise I won’t look at the waitress.

    

History

If tomorrow comes

I will be the dry leaf teardrop crystal

Right by the stairwell

Thick dust all over, broken glass pane, sobbing faintly to brother History

If tomorrow comes

You will be pulling along a perambulator and shopping cart/

pigtails and dreamy eyes.

If tomorrow comes

I will be the industrial warehouse

Dried soot on furnace

Waiting for the delight of limestone;

I will be the rocky bed in the rivulet that was

Young weed on temple deity

Pulled down cars of the 80's.

If tomorrow comes

I will be the ash-heap of today.