Maps
Coffee is your vipassana
Eleven minutes of silence
Your nose twitching
At a favourite childhood dream
At the philanthropy of words
In a favourite childhood book
Smuggled into the tidal froth
Of an Italian caffé latte
In this café where Fitzgerald
Lamented the spoils of youth
}
I steal a glance or two
From within the roils of the sea
A mariner’s mapping of the heart
In 13th–Century faithfulness
The dementia of your hair
Also half-latted
The whimsies of your gypsy top
Your skin, its currencies
}
I study maps and ghostly bayous
… The way a continent drifts apart
I pore over nautical triumphs
And ships now lost forever
I run my finger through cut lines
Along brine and tormented gulfs
Simply trying to find
My way back home to you.
Well-guarded Recipes
You add nolen gur to anything,
you make the anything magic.
That’s the golden rule.
Some things are passed down
as hearsay, some as piecemeal
legacies. The trick, I suppose,
lies in knowing, before
you’ve even tasted the date
palm jaggery infuse its heaven
juice monologue into the deepest
secrets of the aforementioned
anything. I’m speaking to you
about the delirium of siesta.
I’m speaking to you about
believable enough fiction.
I’m speaking to you of atheist
rain that falls not as salvation
but as the interims in a prose
poem. I’m speaking to you
of addendums filled not with
elucidation or augmentation,
but a prayer for forgiveness.
I’m speaking to you of
the electric air before a deep
kiss. I’m speaking to you
of the letter that arrives sans
postage. Don’t you get it
already; in this sweetened lull
of eventide, I’m speaking to you.
About the poet:
Siddharth Dasgupta writes poetry and fiction from lost hometowns and cafés dappled in early morning light. His books lie scattered across verse, fiction, and that special somewhere in between. Siddharth’s fourth book, and second collection of poetry—A Moveable East (Red River)—has emerged in 2021. His words have appeared in Epiphany, Lunch Ticket, The Bosphorus Review, The Aleph Review, The Tiger Moth Review, Kyoto Journal, nether Quarterly, and elsewhere. He lives in the city of Poona, embraced by the warmth of Irani chai. You may follow the author on Instagram @citizen.bliss and https://citizenbliss.squarespace.com