All the Ways We Are Made: Three Poems by Jayanta Bhaumik
2 min read
Certainly, not a spooky story
I tell you how we are made up of
a pickle never tasted. We are so damn tangy,
lemon pulps, little with coriander, with Indian
red chili flakes, drops of atavistic seawater. I can
tell you how wordy are all those ingredients never
uttered by people who walk in the day, walk in
the night. Walk at noon while working in the
mapped streets, and walk while all taking in the
night long sleeps. I can tell you how they walk
amid all walks of life when none holds their hands.
When nobody loves them. How they feel years
after years when we no more accept our terraced
room, and jump into a sky. Sky, I tell you, is like a
walkout from a gathering that we’ve heard will
happen when the world will surely be free one day.
Indolence
If you rightly feel the flow, try
this duck faster than water in a dip.
When we sing, we are the seams between
two letters. Any two. Any length according
to a wafting legacy. And dates are the dry leaves.
Lavish care of time pent up in a wheat field here.
Calling to an ecstasy right before the evening.
Someone like a moon, when you think too much
of an old memory. Dreams, their long
embankment over the time, left inside your ears
like a reminiscent stuttering. Think, how the night
is the gorgeous of the dark.
Firmament, her solo.
We all, now the countless emblems
moving on earth’s breast and back.
Usurping dodo
In our family history, an old prophesy would run.
A star would be born one night. None of us, four five
six seven brothers sisters, know, not any star.
Instead, our mother, amid the cats and the dogs
and the beavers at least the ones looking like them,
I find loitering at times without headlight.
I know people love to forget how they can love.
How they collide with rainwaters and finally try
hard being all so drenched in sweats.
I will be happy seeing any bloke to know how to touch
the ceasefire and fire to become light. Light to make
a shadow crossing all the slippers scattered off
after the celebration of our local fury. I shall dip my
index finger into a skyblue ink, draw on a paper a globe
as small as possible, whose nostrils little larger
than usual, adequate to smell all the nascent baby
emotions, newly admitted to the closeness classes.
The other time when I will not paint, I may wait
for the star to
be born, not necessarily
in a night.
Author: Jayanta Bhaumik is from India, works in the field of Mental Health & Counselling. His past or recent works can be found in Poetry Superhighway, The Gorko Gazette, Madswirl, Tap into poetry, The Candyman's Trumpet, Lothlorien Poetry Anthology, Fevers of The Mind Anthology, 100 Poems for 21st Century by Rough Diamond, The Leafline Magazine, and elsewhere. His first poetry chapbook "Creeping Legends" was published by Alien Buddha in December 2025. Twice nominated for Best of the Net. His X is @BhaumikJayanta