Satya Dash​

Fashion Statement

Faceless the man, his scent woodless, his body of a twelve year
        old, ribs pious and teeming like pencils beneath a sheet, his smile
bashful, his arm basking tensionless in your lap of fire, in the ocean
        around your waist dies a tide of guilt, hands worshipping the state,
the state of its own disappearance which is how a critic describes
        the portrayal of Hong Kong in Chungking Express, and in it
while listening to California Dreamin’ wild hands fight all day long
        a fundamental urge to pleasure the body, but how? By doing what?
By clapping, by slapping the desk in quarter-life delirium as the man
        you cradled has left you a parting note, his boot prints on the floor
a mix of sand and clay, porous enough for your gaze to perforate,

        for your eyes to deliberate and catch a horizon in the ceiling,
the long crack of an isthmus separating the dust of nations
        along which green twigs have emerged to teach unironically
the value of resilience which apparently you have started
        to show a lack of, as evidenced by a tingling sensation
on the surface of your belly, and some folks are calling you
        psychosomatic, and the doctor is asking you — have you been
stressed — and the ultrasound reveals an enlargement of liver,
        and barred from alcohol and hard protein you develop
an obsession with oversized single color round neck tees,
        the choice of monochromatic pleasure punctuating your being.
Night River

​the lake brims over with rain and the fish spill
onto roads as monsoon’s sacrificial offering
to the juggernaut of the city’s traffic, the drivers
fogwashed inside the icy room of their cars, those
with spectacles most vulnerable to the recurrent
haze of glass, opening their windows to taste
the wind and letting a little fury of rain inside;
the driver of my cab calls his beloved (I think), says
I will come home only if you want me to come home
when the call ends abruptly and by the drop of speed
on the highway, I can assume nothing for the car wades
through water like a machine operating with considerable
reluctance in the wrong medium, my eyes catching
the white of the driver’s teeth in the rear view mirror
as the city is lit up by that optimal kind of lightning
that shows us things we didn’t know we wanted to see
--
Satya Dash is a recipient of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2020 Broken River Prize. His poems appear in  Poet Lore, ANMLY, Waxwing, Rhino Poetry, Cincinnati Review, and Diagram, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Nina Riggs Poetry Award, Orison Anthology and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore, India.