Debarshi Mitra

Morphogenesis

“Your eyes proclaim that everything is surface”
—Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, John Ashberry

1.
It is in effect an awakening
a stirring in limbo,
the gradual slipping out of
or into a dream.
We delve deeper into slumber
you and I inside the viscera of a whale
and then the slow descent,
two specks of light quivering
in the mind's eye and I
chasing every shore too distant
look back once and then again.
Eurydice returns, drifts into the continuum.
Sea turtles tilt their heads towards the sky
and I flung so far out into the waters
await my drowning.

2.
In the sky's mausoleum
a monochrome of indigo.
On evenings such as these
the amorphous streets blend into one.
How does one confront the autobiographical?
The one not altogether superfluous
not altogether necessary?
The monolith grows as it must,
in its veiled darkness I return
to the neon underbelly of a woman's flesh.
Muffled screams seep into my blood stream,
among the ponderous legion I seek
in the plentitude of their voices,
a passing glance.

3.
The past quivers like the flame of a candle.
You are now as much a name
as much a thought.
We watch dusk settle on treetops,
examine the hieroglyphics of residual sunlight,
cities rise and fall, empires glimpsed in vanishing light
pass before us, we strain our ears
and hear it call out to us

the unsayable buried in the ambient.

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Debarshi Mitra’s debut book of poems, Eternal Migrant, was published in 2016 by Writers Workshop. His second book, Osmosis, was published by Hawakal in 2020. His works have previously appeared in anthologies like Kaafiyana, Wifi for Breakfast and Best Indian Poetry 2018 and in journals like The Scarlet Leaf Review, Thumbprint, Guftugu, The Seattle Star, The Pangolin Review, Leaves of Ink, The Sunflower Collective, Coldnoon, Indiana Voice
Journal, The Indian Cultural Forum, among others. He was the recipient of the The Wingword Poetry Prize 2017, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2017 and was twice longlisted for the TFA Prize.