ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
FIVE POEMS
by Prageeta Sharma


I CANNOT FORGET YOU

There are populated gestures
in the dining room where we become public
partners of a compromise. If I never lift this explosive

to show the little complexity of diction,
I shall never feel certain if I have lived
a satisfying life. I am unsure of the urgency

that lies beneath shyness. Compelled to negotiate,
I speak out of turn. There is nothing
one can do when they behave poorly.

CATALOGUE OF SWINDLES AND PERVERSIONS
after Orwell's "Politics and English Language"

Ring the changes on or take up the cudgels for,
to toe the line
and ride roughshod over,
to stand shoulder to shoulder with Achilles' heel,
swan song and hot bed.
Do not pervert another phrase.

Grist the mill and make itself felt.
exhibit a tendency, take effect,
deserving of serious consideration,
this is to operate with false verbal limbs.

Pretentious diction is elemental and phenomenal,
primary or promotional.
Deracinated, clandestine.

Meaningless words are romantic, scientific and reactionary.

Jargon particular to Marxist writing is impermissible,
extramarital and non fragmentary.
Do not pervert another phrase.

IN OPEN WATER, IN MATHEMATICAL STAR
after Breton

The glove was lost under the twinkling of night, under the premise
of an open pocket and led me to the question of captivity with a brass

timepiece calculating the motion, it was in the midst of a blush.
In the desire for suspension, for speed, you beamed, led

mathematically to the pupil of evening, the gossamer cast
overlooking noon and of the formula of morning loose over the hands

while it was your vodka that was clear. All who had been driving
pulled over to touch weather in rare bodily grain


THE QUALITIES OF THINGS

I keep freedom under my belt, I say, this is for the little people.
With a taunt and shallow plush smile, I have read a book that will keep
oranges that bright aluminum and poets amongst trucks fretting
in that neighborly way. He might say,
you are looking for a stray dog beneath straw light.
I, however, want to hold up a candle in a philosopher's coat
and with a beard to scratch,
account for all misguided phantoms in the shadow, carry a silver buckle
and a manly fat stomach, salute the orange grove, and ask the marines.
With freedom under your belt, he might say, the stench is wicked,
the dogs are wicked this time of night. I bar the door. He rubs his eyes.
We have never seen geese as white this early.
The quantitative methods for business are sung out the window in late spring
when one receives letters and packages,
identifies the neighbors dog with a smile.
We leave a note to the traffic cop, this an imagined car, it is a shiny bright red.
There are lilies near the park. The woman laughs who so dearly wants
the woods to be a deep thicket, a blue night.
Paper work is not for the survivors, it is for the hunter, lifting the pen to
the prey, down after the kill. I am willing to sacrifice only the little of the
remainder of ink,
persistence is for the cute animal, the cat, or the stuffed bear.
Manufactured, I send you little of me, I do not take pleasure in busy tasks.
I tremble. You are a ghost. I ask you, what can a dollar bill mean
to a pack of jackals in early autumn or spring or what have you.

AGAINST CAREERS

The poem started in Providence
where something begun in my head
but continuous then I could imagine.

While I was walking
around clean streets,

white for no hesitant light withdrew.
It was all right
then and now.

I want to be there in Providence,
to bring all of the forethought:

The earnest versus the habitual.
The scholar versus the drama student.
The poet versus the poet.
The love versus the erector set.
The drowning versus the disappearance.

Now back in the city and the air is three-dimensional.
Logically New York City
is both the future and the past.

I want to be a poet all of the time.

It's quiet enough for me to hear a siren's full call
And drunk laughing people not in the least bit cruel.