Every Jaded January: Three poems by Sneha Bhura
Photo: Karan Madhok
‘A 5 o’clock shadow / Makes oblong pools in my mind / I can’t thrash it out’
Winter solstice
Inner basic buoyancy
Totters off-centre
In January.
Raving, unsent letters
Stew and simmer
In tear-stroked recovery.
Why does it rain so hard
Unseasonably?
Why do I scour the past
Every jaded January?
Rake up unbidden
Quiet, little origin stories.
It goes and goes, piling
The same old dung heap
Every frigid January.
Webbed feet aspires
A hot bath in oranges
For Venus in retrograde
For dog days sanctuary.
*
The Future
There will be early sunbeams
Singing cowbells and serenity
A black-dressed woman, dancing
On a yacht, fedoras and Bellinis
We’ll go to white gravel cafes
Speckled in gold and silver light
Play vintage backgammon
Last of the stragglers, rejoice!
May the beautiful stories be
Stuffing tacos with mummy
Rolling dumplings, agnolotti,
Pooling dusk, parks and poesy.
Oh to colour flower pots
In a house full of paintings
Cushions in lilac and sea green
You pick a colour, stay with it
Can you keep on swinging
Like it's always February
Bursting tulips, Sakura leaves
When love's a battered dream?
*
White Hair
I smashed a frozen stick of rose
into smithereens
The petals cracked and withered
On a foaming wish
It looked pink and ruby and delish
I did not have the nerve to pluck it
My skates had long, sharp blades
To steel-slash ice
The back stiffened, I couldn't hold
Walk, tap or glide
Like the smooth, silk-rolling types
I dwell in fear of a bear so white
Salted, prickly, soft and cushiony
A 5 o’clock shadow
Makes oblong pools in my mind
I can't thrash it out
Colours blur, the words disappear
They squeal secret sighs at night
***
Sneha Bhura is a Delhi-based journalist with The Week. She has worked for publications like Open magazine, Mint Lounge and Fortune. Her first chapbook, Velvet Grapes: Drunk Midnight Poetry (Hawakal Publishers), was out in January 2021. Her most recent poems have been published in the Madras Courier and The Punch Magazine. You can find her on Instagram: @sneha.bhura and Twitter: @bhura_sneha.
