Barnali Ray Shukla
​​​Autumn 2017

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Graffiti on the bark

Shadows of a family name
on a sunset
washed with tanned motifs
Footprints that went past
the map of our hometown.
Dusty with memories
gone molecular,
gnawed at the
circumference of timber
that counts as bark,
spoke nothing of
the skeletons
in cupboards
that were born
as the tree fell
heavy with lies
tied in threads,
torn between triangles
that it wore as graffiti.
Pet-names, nicknames
aliases of family name
like sprouting leaves
maroon with a blush
against a tomorrow
green with envy;
or was it money
that it hid below its trunk
The roots look dead
as you dig deeper
into magma of darkness.
Familial lines
now crawl like rodents
in the dead of the night
only to carry home dead meat
that lies hidden in the stench
of the family name
marinating with nothing but
vanity shorn of pride,
home now to termite.
The family name
is still etched in bronze,
the gold and silver
ought to go to someone else.

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Draw up my will

A canopy of silence
rests on your eyelids,
the pyre still warm.
A treaty with flames,
tongues that taste
a lullaby as
life morphs a memoir
now cytoplasm , thoughts
saline desires
over kohl, braving the
redness in eyes
of time to take you back
to a womb of sleep
woken only by what you
leave behind
treasured not measured
in silence under the canopy
of life springing up again
as droplets of ocean
in your pen , inking
thinking of you.

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