Name
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘Sometimes, a name / Slips through / the sieve of the heart / and it quivers inside / like hair covering the red face / of a tiny child’
Sometimes, a name
Slips through
the sieve of the heart
and it quivers inside
like hair covering the red face
of a tiny child.
Under the orange glow
of a dead day
this name
enters the heart with the violence
of red.
Red pop art sprawling on the sleek mascara tube,
clotted, crimson-bodied.
This name is covered from head to toe
with light that refuses to enter
the blind spots of a girl’s body.
It makes you scream
like a puppet that strokes
its mother’s milk.
The name smells strong
like carbolic acid scattered across the staircase
on a rainy day. It’s loud like music,
a headache
that recalls a soft Biblical moment,
(Clothes being taken down the washing line,
one by one)
before splitting your skull
like it’s a cake
The name is chanted at every death
NAME
NAM
NA
N
.
It slips through the sieve of the heart and is whispered into the ear
when we are asked to treat people with kindness.
It’s the name with which every poem begins,
when there’s nothing but honesty.
***
Anandi Kar is pursuing Masters in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Some of her poems have already been published in journals and magazines like Indian Literature, Scarlet Leaf Review, Indian Review, Poems India, and Muse India. She has reviewed works in translation for the Antonym Magazine. She has worked as a content writer for the popular Instagram page, “Chai and Feminism.” You can find Anandi on Instagram: @zatannagirl.
