Transmutation
lurching from eating to sleeping and back to make wings
of iconic orange to the monarch’s antennae its short
life span still hot and momentous the monarch doesn’t dream
of greatness but aspires towards seasoned equilibrium
of the tight-rope-walker with no trampoline
below for an audience: teeth chattering on a ring of fire
the girdle that renders the hip’s blasphemy
holy I discovered the heat of this alchemy when I fell
asleep in your lap I discovered having swallowed fire
I couldn’t dissipate the elements at will a gastric phenomenon
hormones regaling a fiery bath with refrain even the monarch swallows
hurt to grow in nano-bladders milkweed toxins harnessing scent
of poisons to warn off predators the blackbird that eats butterfly wings
falls sick did I tell you I have gamma ions running in my veins
the doctors told me— I never recovered from your nuclear diet
now the state waits for vaporized urine to rain back & skin hangs
on bone like shirts on a summer clothesline believe it or not
the apocalypse isn’t this but yet to come & my story is still being written
on the penultimate page of the lepidopterist’s thesis
while on the final page already inked are both our obituaries
Midnight Train
Carousel spin of electron pollen sticking
to corners of a serpentine quadrilateral formed
by the opportune displacement of dewy bodies
by waves of post colonial gales turning
the sulfur-pounded sky tidal with a tapestry
redolent of intricate designs inscribed
on the archaic walls of the imambara I visited
to spend an afternoon gurgling in my warm
idiot throat the heat of another afternoon we spent here
your resting head making of my black denim lap a bloom
of night tulip blood names of birds shimmering
on your zinc forehead the layers of occasional gold
summery refractions glint my skin rustling beneath fabric :
a chiffon doused in the fragrance of your
effervescent shampoo : packaged and labeled in batches
at a laboratory that spent years perfecting
its precise chemistry to guarantee such wild parades
of the wily olfactory crystal hooves jutting sharp
pressing mark into thick calluses
of time who knew
nails could relieve
From the Author: Some of my latest work orbits the inundation of unease and doom we as a species continue bringing upon ourselves. As a poetic mode of thinking, I’ve been invested in the intersection of human desire with nature, in attempting confluences of myth, memory and image, hoping to uncover any resonances and dissonances in the process. Both of these poems attempt a strategy of links of consciousness as a way to connect ecological impulses in our interior and exterior worlds already past the brink of irreversible climate change. Both try doing it with a fragmented lyric to accentuate the precariousness on this precipice.
Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2020 Broken River Prize. His poems appear in Poet Lore, ANMLY, Waxwing, Rhino Poetry, Cincinnati Review, and Diagram, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Orison Anthology and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore, India. He tweets at: @satya043.
