Shome Dasgupta
Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), and most recently, the novels The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books) and Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West), a prose collection, Histories Of Memories (Belle Point Press), a short story collection, Atchafalaya Darling, and a poetry collection, Iron Oxide (Assure Press). His writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Emerson Review, New Orleans Review, Jabberwock Review, American Book Review, Arkansas Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at www.shomedome.com and @laughingyeti.
Constellations: Broken French Bengali Broke English
Je pense—je pense, je pense.
Qu'est-ce que c'est? Tes yeux,
comme le soleil ou la lune—tings
from a triangle quand the evening
arrives. Il est cinq heures et je suis
sitting sur the porch avec un verre
de limonade ici en Lafayette—my
thoughts float from star to star.
Tumi kemon achho? Tumi kothai?
I think about the time we laughed,
forgetting about the tears given for
a lost friend—amra tin jon natcham,
bala and bindi, tabla beats, Kolkatar
mashari nets draped like capes—
amra flew with blackbirds and swam
in the Gangai—holy and burnt.
No prithibi for us, just a moment
marbled and carved with tongues.
I'm alone—watching a butterfly
fall asleep between two leaves.
Who am I? A reflection of dreams
found in a pond full of frogs and fish.
Somewhere near, you two, waving
and holding hands, singing to me
a song we once heard in twilight.
We played in fields, now in a mouth
of a Cajun rabbit or in sonic waves
of a Kolkata flat satellite. Let's wander
and wander among constellations—
until the mango skies root our minds.