By Anagha Smrithi
i sit down to write a poem. the poem means nothing.
i slip it under my sleeve and forget about it until
it comes out of the washing machine a week later
with syllables that sound like nothing - garbled wind,
shredded up radio static, baby’s babble.
i try to make it rhyme, but it refuses.
even as a child, i knew how
the tail-ends of words could resemble each other,
soon / moon / blue lagoon
each long-short vowel so whole and ripe,
tumbling into my small hands
like a purpling fruit. you can feel a word
in your hands first and then your mouth,
the small, clear weight of sound,
swallowing, swallowing, bright
and tart the back of your throat.
without sound, there is no poem.
so i plunge my arms into the city,
into that soft bruised body,
and gather the remains of sound,
train sounds, bird sounds, summer sounds,
funeral sounds, highway sounds,
the sound of my feet hitting the solemn earth,
over and over, like they always have,
and perhaps it could mean something after all.
Anagha is a 24 year old poet from Bangalore, India. Her work has previously appeared in Anthropocene, Nether Magazine and Catharsis Mag, among others. She writes about the body and everyday spaces.
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