Three Poems by Sagnik Mukherjee

Subway

On every stair

Sits a seller,

Some selling toys that don’t play,

Some selling watches that don’t tell time.

Faces smeared with moth eaten tubelights,

As puddles of brown water invade traveller’s shoes.

Nobody stops. Nobody moves.

Nobody comes. Nobody goes.

Sellers seeking passengers of a

Blind train station;

Selling toys that don’t play,

And watches that don’t tell time.

Heights

Twilight.

Leviathan rears its head

Gasping in conspiratorial concrete.

Red light at the tip of its height,

Shines on a silhouette’s bald spot.

A silhouette…

Roaming the evening,

Struck by a nightmare.

Teetering boots slip away authority,

While acres of dumpyard envelopes

Oxygenless evening.

Tastebuds conspire milk dew honey;

Saliva tastes evaporated icicles,

Hanging forever by flight’s noose,

Is this where Kubla Khan lives?

Mortuary

Orphaned traffic honks,

Drips those stately walls.

Impaled between Today and Tomorrow,

A retina dangles,

Egg white.

It dreams…

Of sunless siestas,

As the mourning room,

Stitches shut.

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About the Poet:

Sagnik Mukherjee lives in the southern suburbs of the city of Kolkata. He has done Masters in English from the University Of Calcutta, and is currently pursuing higher studies. An avid reader from childhood, his works are influenced by eclectic art forms like literature, film, photography and paintings. His poems are characterised by psychological imprints made by the human mind as it enters into a dialogic relationship with the world.