“Out of Time” and Other Poems

By Ishita Basu Mallik

Out of Time

After the sun scrambled your microSD card
all that was left to do was sit
by the water

That year winter came and took
its shoes off at the door
so it could walk barefoot to the pond,
shoot out a single finger
of exclamation
at a baby brinjal,
and crouch down next to a chipped
tea cup in a stainless steel dish

It could be that winter did
no such thing and you’re projecting. Just as well
that evening couldn’t get to you through the rappelling light,
your shelter clear of hot shards flung your way.
Just as well you sat
with wizened grass, moss-mellowed cement

A baghrol tests the water’s surface
komorebi
on komorebi

Somewhere to the left, a fence
gone wild
sculptural
with palm fronds
too sharp for asphalting feet
and on top a bird you’ve been trying to get a clear photo of
with no luck

Your cup of tea grows more than cold. It’s a changeling now,
learning to be still
a starry eye trained on green

Your phone is far away and you don’t
wear watches. Yet a soft countdown starts
inexorable
red on black on rust
coob
coob
coob

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Cranes

When you were still
under
the window next to your bed let in so much light
I could at last see the body
of water
across the street:
a spoonful of desert not yet licked clean
not yet a ghost sunk deep
in the foundation
of the next gated complex
bearing a name plucked from some gentle European country
side

They had to keep the windows closed
all the time
and you shivered in the AC
your ward-mate pleaded for—
bone-rattling cold as balm
for the fire
of a stent implant

In the evening the ward shrank
to a quarter of its apparent daytime volume
Gone were the kingfishers
I might have hallucinated— blue flash
like a floater in the corner of my eye

Beyond the pond, a murmuration
of lights
and cranes towering over the land
their necks a delicate arch,
patient
enough to build a thousand years

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Letter to one who can’t read

Seaside amusement park
that doubles up
as border check post

Khaki and camo guards the promenade
Barbed wire keeps children
of all ages safe
from that leaping, devouring mother maw

A restaurant marks the spot
where the town’s sewage makes holy
union with the ocean
Besan, palm oil, sand and salt
suggest a cure for sharp tongues

A sunset so weak
that pack of dogs never even look up—
serpent-spined dreamers
a string of wet pearls
stranded

Having paid our toll
we stare so hard we miss
when brackish froth turns black
water

Later that night
on the other side of town
we sit closer to the ocean
for free this time

The sea breeze curdles, tasting of sour
debris, harbinger of disquiet
and chemical runoff

We watch a man walk a Husky
across the concrete slabs— the man on his phone,
the dog on the line
happy with the spray on its face
a blizzard by any other name

Not like you
slow cooking under a stranger’s car
your panting body shell
-shocked
these nights interminable

How fast could you run,
how far would you swim?
I’ll go with you.

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A poet-cartoonist-artist, birdwatcher and cat butler based in Kolkata, India, Ishita has been previously published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Aleph Review, Vayavya, Sable LitMag, ANMLY, Komikaze, Ink Brick and elsewhere, and won the Toto Funds the Arts award for Creative Writing in English in 2011.

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