“American Eclipse" and Other Poems
By Sumit Shetty
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Content notice: Suicide
Ruve Narang with the Underlands Collective, Roots in Movement, undated. Multimedia.
Image description: Installation with a large central mobile suspended in mid-air, consisting of branches festooned with strips of cloth. Hanging in a darkened space, a bright light casts its shadow on the floor.
Atoms
I should be used to this nothingness by now.
my atoms have been nothing long before life was forced
down their gullets, stitching one day after next,
crafting meaning bookended by vacuum
a physically fit 28 year old Dutch woman,
the papers said, euthanised herself;
Zoraya’s atoms lay scattered across time
carrying her name with them
my cousin's suicide
was not deemed newsworthy,
but in crematorium corners
the neighbours whispered
too young too young
how did it happen?
why did God do this to your family?
too young too young
what was her name again?
I'm much much older now
than she ever would be
but maybe her atoms regrouped, formed
the physically fit 28 year old Dutch woman
mind addled again with the voices
(now in Dutch)
now when these atoms regroup again
I hope they get a few more years;
bit by bit, I hope they live more
than I could ever hope to
the nothingness calls to us
like Amma does when it's time
for dinner but we stay distracted
and build castles of atoms
that were once,
and will again be, us
Ruve Narang, Anatomy of a Migrant's Shoe, undated. Installation and research series that deconstructs heavily-worn everyday objects to reveal the grueling physical and psychological journeys of displaced individuals and refugees (detail).
Image description: A row of worn workboots lined up on the floor as though marching forward, sprouting branches instead of legs.
American Eclipse
the umbra skipped us again;
like movie aliens deciding
skybeam spots, the diamond ring
of the syzygy chose to blaze
over the Hudson– a spectacle
reserved for dollar pizzas,
busker hats, copper bulls
over there, do they also fear occult
reflections in bowls of milk? are
their pregnant women wary
of venturing out? when pigeons panic
over there, can I take a shower here?
neighbour uncle fasts when days
darken here, but foreign eclipses
are purer, he says, custom-free;
his sons live out his dreams under
the shadow– hands full of bottomless
sodas and Big Macs, gnashing
on meats forbidden back home
sacred threads dissolve
into ethnic beads, they learn
to breathe purer air, maintain lawns
and borders of suburbia– to assimilate
in an alien world, they phone home
once a month, fly back once a decade;
prodigal changelings, good
gora boys
over there, do they fold their father’s
x-rays five times, and stare
at the unfolding cosmos, right through
the osteoporosis? I wonder
if bones look the same
under bleached skins
Ruve Narang, Anatomy of a Migrant's Shoe, undated. Installation and research series that deconstructs heavily-worn everyday objects to reveal the grueling physical and psychological journeys of displaced individuals and refugees (detail).
Image description: A single worn workboot, sprouting branches instead of a leg.
How will you take me?
not wrapped in the tiranga, or gobbled by a woodchipper
something in between– maybe feeding the sharks,
or backflipping off the space station;
a nice little spontaneous combustion
but after a last meal biryani,
please
maybe when they look for reasons,
my journals will be a note held for long,
way past the encore
disregard my pleading, even on my worst
days– people should go in the order
they had arrived
he could’ve still been older than me; we all could've
marveled at him astride another mountain,
seen him mark off his checklists– look there, we played
kabbadi with him, even then he was the best!
the electric furnace gobbled him up, done in thirty
minutes; at the wake, incense ash hounded
his schoolboy smile, withering with the smoke
that won’t stay put in my palms
I'm forgetting his face now, just the outlines remain
like a police sketch of a person missing, hurriedly taken–
fragmented frames that I'm not trying too hard
to hold on to
Sumit Shetty is a writer and entrepreneur from Pune, India. He is an organizer with the Pune Writers’ Group and is currently working on a science-fiction novel. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Alipore Post, Unlost Journal, The Universe Journal, Gulmohur Quarterly, the Usawa Literary Review, and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English.
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Ruve Narang (https://ruvenarang.com) (b.1991, Mumbai) is a multidisciplinary artist, storyteller, and creative director based in Mumbai, India. She combines fine art, psychology, and literature to drive activism, challenge social narratives, and foster creative dialogue. She has collaborated on global projects that span art, literature, and social injustice.
“foreign eclipses/ are purer, he says, custom-free”. Three poems on reorderings by Sumit Shetty.