Flitting Oddments

Based in Kolkata, Anil Pradhan is pursuing doctoral research at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, and his academic interests include Indian queer and diasporic literatures and cultures. He writes poetry to, in his words, “make some sense of life”.

Teaser

crisis

my words often write themselves, in nonchalance
hanging together in little myriad acquaintances
like plump grapes upon woody capillaries
like morning dew on ignorant dandelions
what if one fine autumn afternoon
they find their affinity lost in silence
what if they realize the crisis too late, that
conjunctions, prepositions, similes have left
have abandoned, forgotten, exiled themselves
in fear of anagnorisis, of catharsis
of denouement, of inevitable death
and upon such a figment of tragic consolation
what if i find a sudden thirst for poetic epiphany
like crimson wildfire in search of turquoise shores
like faint goodbyes unheard at untimely farewells
like questions left hanging at the middle of the night
maybe my words will remain just words
signifying nothing as they always conspire to do
swirling within the fog of imagination
tormented by the caress of memory