Four Poems || Sanhita Roy

The Small Guy

What is that in his eyes? Let us
Remember
Friends and all
That desires are never
Supposed to be beautiful, hygienic
Rather, pestilential
Disgusting if you will.
But there is softness in his body 
And willingness in his soul-
That will make do for today-
Not the softness that demands
There be some softness that breaks through.
I'm not a wet nurse.
If you want my breasts
Want my breasts-
You do not beat about the bushes
Of Victorian morality
And Aegean hypocrisy.
There is enough space in my slit to accommodate the whole of your town-
So beware of what you ask for,
Beware of what fire you play with-
There was this other tall guy who did this before you
And as I see, of now, he stands defeated 
. .since some would see it 
Through defeat or victory
Without understanding
The language of the body

This small thing I bet
I can take you into my body
And teach a few things
About the here and the now
This body
This body
This body
Will answer if you ask of it.


Improbable Movements

You diffuse like paint in water
I try to hold your body in my vision that keeps dissolving
Now graceful against the stairwell
Now looking up from an abyss
Then disappearing down an elevator
That probably moves sideways

All words are hard words
Like hard water, intractable
No word can speak touch
No hand bothers with speech
All is rock

The rock shall crack in this summer heat
Waterless
Wild fires will burn on hills
Would you dare 
in such inferno-
Touch the burning rock
And give a body for the fire
That all consumes-

For we must stop
We must stop
All this
Burning in California
Burning in British Columbia

And come together
To make silence in this night?


Your Body Breeds Familiarity

Your body breeds familiarity
Unbeknownst to man
Of verbs and proverbs
From the dawn of time
Bricks stack against an onrush 
Of pain
Hour by hour
Meditating upon this
Slow building up

It breaks
The tenuous thread
Holds no more
In it's vice like grip

What have you or I
To say to each other?
We are come at that
End of time
Much like the beginning
Where language was not

And we had dealings
Not unlike these


Saturday: A Tale of Deception

​It was on my way back from work and eating succulent dumplings alone at a restaurant and bringing mother back from her work and at the end of the day a restful tea

But you were there where you weren’t supposed to be you are often where you’re not supposed to be when you’re not supposed to be I see you inside the shop your friends don’t believe where you say you are when you say you are

My breath held tight against my chest bracing so as not to see her whom I’m supposing to see mother appears and I hardly know what I’m saying two teas please I saw your grey shirt inside the  shop your tall bold form

My first instinct as usual is to turn back but I turn back again and there is that tall grey form but you’re not there it is someone else only the profile was you, most definitely you, but now it is not you

I must have stared for he is now staring and mother is saying some utter nonsense and I do not hear once again he's looking at me, once again, with full eyes, this different person but with the same desire the same vision the same look with which you used to look at me

And I am at a loss do I love anew a different person or do I love the same this new person or love different the same person
It becomes a confusion matrix
I look back into those eyes for that is all that is left for me to do and then with a shrug of impotency/despondency he leaves for nothing can be done about it my mother keeps talking