Preparing for Another Life: Four Poems by Ankush Banerjee
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘Before anaesthesia shatters / the bough of your body, before the / moon overhead is a mouth of darkness, you / pray they fill the space between dislocated hip / & future with what you heard but / could never hold’
Sometimes After-Burn is Worse than Slow Burn
The evening before, when I got drunk, and you rescued
me from a bunch of guys for burning a 10 rupee note,
imitating The Joker, for saying, “its only money
that you want”, drunkenness making something glorious
of second-grade contempt, and that razor punch
missed my face because you pulled
me harder than my weight, and later, waiting
for the bus, we sat in squalor painted in moonlight,
and men smoked bidis around us, played cards,
jerked off thinking of what to fuck next,
you fearlessly ran your hand over a scabies-ridden
dog’s head which had come to us for food, saying,
sometimes all we need is affection,
and the bus arrived and we had no biscuits
to give, so we fooled ourselves into thinking,
affection will put it to sleep, and
as the bus whirred past, and the night grew into yearning
the shape of steel rods and sweat smells,
you described to me the exact moment your wife
had confessed she had cheated, not once or twice,
not for sex, not for lust, not even for filling
an affection-sized hole left in her at
childhood, and how you had been making a
presentation, and you had wanted to crush the laptop
and throw it at her face, but all you managed
was to put your hands in your pocket, a slow
burn tiptoeing up your spine, tingling your ears
and all you did was to let the marriage cage open
like letting go an anchor into water
swallowing its own azure weight, and the
bus horn pierced the night, pierced
the veil of language we use to birth
the world in, and what you said was,
my palms smell of the dog, my palms smell
of the darkness of the dog.
*
Field Notes on Retrieving Lost Things
(for Tia)
Note one, or how to discover when to not let go.
I am massaging varicose-ridden grandmother.
Relief uncoils her insides like bloodroot’s petals.
She says, I will haunt my sons
if they make a Mall where this house is,
& I ask how, heart’s tongue pulsating
a story’s horizon,
she says, after I die I will come back
as a crow, perch on that Jamun Tree,
pointing to stained-glass windows, still there
in it, a frog-shaped hole
from whose belly you & I
scooped moonlight
slashed by fireflies.
Note two, or making a prayer from what is left to us.
After you left, your name was shards
roofed from my mouth. I spat
glaciers of silence. Because all my friends
were make-believe, resembled you,
wore white-rimmed specs, a ponytail, & full-blooded laugh.
We played the same games – hopscotch & scrabble, hide &
seek, & hand-cricket. I win all of these &
we go cycling. Past Mintu’s grocery shop where
you flick bubble-gums & lozenges.
Through lanes & alleys, scissoring puddles,
squeezing reflections of mid-flight crows
from brown surfaces.
Note three, or retrieving without the hope of holding.
After you left, I kept water for crows in a cracked,
green bowl. Stray dogs drank from it &
sparrows and pigeons, & then crows,
who came, pecked at the water’s surface, cawed,
& flew away.
*
What Poems See
I want to write a love song for a guppy
no longer in the office aquarium.
When it was brought, it had the memory of fish.
It swam around impatient circles,
diver, mermaid, starfish: impervious.
Oysters, sea clamps, mussels,
anemones, barnacles: all plastic, killers.
You could spot it in the cave
behind muscular water filters. Meditating.
Some days it shat so much, the waters
turned murky & then its tail expanded,
became flaming amaltas melting glass.
When it vanished,
we thought it had died. Some said,
it was stolen, others, that its giant tail
had grown heavier than water,
Only the poem saw it
latched to a bluebottle’s spindly leg,
jump into the river.
*
Preparing for Another Life
Before the anaesthesia kicks in,
for the last time – you are Long Distance Runner
no longer in Pre-Op
staring at that dome of light –
a moon you wish to touch
where you don’t need legs to fly.
The body like a train’s whistle,
tunnel’s worth of darkness
coiling around it. An attendant
jokes about the birthmark they will cut
to place the screws in the socket.
The birthmark looks like a grackle
about to fly. Before anaesthesia shatters
the bough of your body, before the
moon overhead is a mouth of darkness, you
pray they fill the space between dislocated hip
& future with what you heard but
could never hold
in that joke about a grackle
taking flight.
***
Ankush Banerjee’s debut volume of poetry, An Essence of Eternity was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2016. His work appears in The Chakkar, Out of Print, Indian Literature, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Eclectica, Cha, Collateral, Jaggery Lit, The New Indian Express, and elsewhere, and appear in the following anthologies: Best Asian Poetry 2021 (Kitaab, 2021), Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2020, 2021, 2022 (Hawakaal), and Converse: Contemporary Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann Books, 2022). You can find him on X: @ankushbanerji09 and Instagram: @banerjee.ankush99.
