Kelly DuMar
Unsent Text #33
We’ve ghosted everything so often, ghosting
is behind us now. The river gorge is awe
& swagger, the scritch of trees against sky,
light staggering through consciousness. Maybe
sun and water seem to braid but remain separate.
I cup pink in my hands, lie rippled for the skip
of burgundy stones. I sleep on riverbanks, clove-shaped.
My heart wades in wolf-shine. You don’t understand
the seduction of places where fish strum quiet water
and day is an abandoned country. Maybe
a ghosted country is like an unloved person,
whiskeyed & weeping in the bath at midnight.
The Argentine tegu will eat anything—
eggs of birds and reptiles, doves, small animals.
I could eat anything. Maybe such loneliness
is love some days. I wish we would leave / each other /
and wish we would not. A weald nursed by the tame
is still wild. Maybe the contours of our country
became your muscles, its state lines ripped past
your veins, its shadows inhabited your face.
When you look at me, you see your torment.
When I look at you, I see my youth. I am sorry.
I am not sorry we met. Maybe you were always
a ghost in search of bone, a jagged cry to score you real.
Maybe I come with a glittery costume
so you don’t even have to thank me.
Anindita Sengupta was raised in Mumbai, India, and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of City of Water (Sahitya Akademi) and Walk Like Monsters (Paperwall). Her work has appeared in Plume, One, perhappened, Ice Floe Press and others. She is a Charles Wallace (Kent) fellow, and recipient of awards from Muse India and TFA India. Her website is www.anindita.sengupta.com and she tweets as @anu_sengupta.
Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from Boston. She’s author of three poetry chapbooks, girl in tree bark (Nixes Mate, 2019), Tree of the Apple, (Two of Cups Press), and All These Cures, (Lit House Press). Her poems, prose and photos are published in many literary journals including Bellevue Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Fat, Storm Cellar, Corium & Tiferet, and frequently in Feral. Kelly serves on the Board of the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG), and produces the Bi-Monthly Open Mic Writer Series attended by women worldwide. She blogs her daily nature photos & creative writing at kellydumar.com/blog.