Biopsy

            Debmalya Bandyopadhyay

someplace something breaks my mother’s eyes two spoonfuls of water

an ant carrying the scent of salt to its family soon they will gather 

a slackjawed clothesline on a smooth marble floor with a petal or two

something said out loud its brass beats on the world’s softest eardrums 

the forecast of demise is a conspiracy about the gathering of falcons  

a spoonful of still water a bowerbird perched over it drinking drinking 

I’m looking up at the trees again seems like they cannot hold anything 

at night watch your steps on the perilous shore of grief said my mother 

however far this estuary stretches its sandskin is pimpled with crabs

as a child I believed we would all walk off the stage hand in hand 

lights drunk & dimmed from each side now low now a little lower

here is the slow dusk of suffering: an urge to scratch a forgotten wound

I open a notebook and out flies a butterfly. I watch a lizard chew on a moth. 

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Debmalya Bandyopadhyay (he/him) is a writer and mathematician based in Birmingham, UK. His poems, translations, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Wildness, HAD, Chestnut Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere.