Three Poems by Srishti Dutta Chowdhury

the mountain goat goes baa-a-a-a

i am alive-still
             looking at the longarch-browed
                           mountain goat go baa-a-a-a
grazing on my potted chickweed;

daddy gifted it to you
              fifteen years ago,
when
   the whistling orchards
brimming with
                      gold oranges
could contain no more,

and
       railway tracks
                          had enough
                     stones-tossed about
            for two hands
                             to arrange them
                                                     in a line.



who mowed your lawn before spring?

we should have
                   which is why it is
                          food
we did not

                 so
it keeps planting
                  crushed seeds of
untimely saplings
                      could-be

brown-orange before
                         grass-green
:fuck-me-not-why

the garden-dry lined
               with
                    empty soil
             --vacant.



keep away from pretty places

it was saturday--the air smelt of
kisses--broken--midway

it was brown-skied dark
the water hurled onto the edge of the blue boat under
prying fingers
the marmalade laid perfectly on moonspoons,
we messed our happy picnic day

tanned baskets, fussy brown, you
furled across
the darknothing
bunched larkspur pushed
aside

won't you come to my place tonight?

pretty was
when
you kissed me
like i ain't yours but
going to
be

but
i
clumsy-mess,
only wanted to write more
poetry
more
blue-ribboned yellowbordered gibberish

come to bed, tonight

unmounting
your waning presence of my
brown frame
only when

your
nails
gave me no pleasure,
mon cher--only flung my
purple-ink across a few more
pages

i never had you, did i?

unrolling old cassette tapes--sharing a lemon-sicle--smelling gasoline-steel
together was our happyplace till

i learned to hold a pen
and you

to un-love familiar
me

it was another of our saturdays
prettyplace warmwater strungbaskets
packed racquets, bacon, even your favorite pair of socks, my
notebook,

when,

without warning you collapsed the mossgreen bridge.

A student of Comparative Literature for most part of the day, Srishti Dutta Chowdhury reads, listens to whatever catches her fancy and writes a tad bit whenever she cannot do without putting some words to paper.  She has been published at Coldnoon Travel Poetics, Bangalore Review, Quail Bell, the Brown Critique Magazine, the Norwich Radical, Kindle, etc.  Besides reading, writing, living poetry, she fancies herself as a food philanderer and keenly follows food photography.  Her photography can be viewed at the Instagram handle "srishtiduttachowdhury"