Rayan Chakrabarti
Rayan Chakrabarti is a writer from Kolkata, India. His poems have been published in Mulberry Literary, Monograph Magazine and Indian Ruminations. He likes to travel to the hills and play the piano.
Becoming Cyborg
Now I become Shadow,
Accept me, Mother
now I shed teeth and penis,
accept this haunting.
There is that time, vast oceans of heave, that exists before the discovery. And though the house in the nerves has shifted, and corrugated tin has started to take measure of the tea, the lack of the discovery means that everything is yet equilibrium. In fact, the ants are bubbling away in the sauna of rice, and deep sparrows have risen from the colouring book. A long family of the day will be upon the silverware, polishing off the sun in reflection.
I have left my body to become a spectator to its contours. Just around my hip, I’ve discovered a new mole to gnaw into, bread it into knead, make it palatable. I’ve locked the door to immerse myself in its expanse. Still, a night has to travel before the morning breaks it open. A half-brewed tearcan melts from ice-cool on the bedpost.
Midnight has brought with them a new audience. Grains of metal, flying in from a faraway galaxy latch onto my armpit. Some of the blood has found a station there. In the moonlight, when their arrival announces a river, you can only hear the softness of the steel bed.
But who are they, hunting for new territory at this part of the night? Known customers trudge along the margins of my vision, travellers to a fasting star.
The Almirah, bank of dreams, kneels around my childhood. Monsoon wells in the hippocampus, stinging of death. Mother burned at the stake, for whose sake do we go on living? Perhaps, a summer of longing, last summer with toffee and younging.
The Crow, measurer of blight, gossips around my neck, pecking veins, counting on the quick shine and gloss. For him, it is a step out of routine, but he’s been out for vengeance since I stopped feeding their offspring last year. Feeding them goat’s brain and koyel tails, so they can prey and wring. I too shall become nest and birthing.
Tree of sorrow, Tree of light, become creeper around me, take my fingers as yours, make me disappear before they break the door down, before the final shock of parenthood, let me become leafvein and telephone pole charging electric through the city.
In some stills, the morning is.
Fear not, trees of sheath surround you,
bark of wire and calm.