One Poem by Palash Mahmud

Horizontal Lines of Lady Lazarus

 

At the devil’s hour, my dream broke

Like rainwater splits up on a colocasia leaf.

Maybe my cinnamon mood is blind tonight?

 

Maybe my psoas shadows are lost at last.

I heard the coarse silence of a cat’s leaping

Over the horizontal lines of Lady Lazarus.

 

A dead rat set equitably amid its incisors.

As if death is trapped into life's claws.

The cat's squinting eyes in the moonlight

 

Sieving lustrous phosphorescence

Through the semi-transparent curtain.

I felt scratchy wool on my heart's surface.

 

I am not sure, what would you do?

If you were my doppelgänger.

How do you eavesdrop the beat of darkness?

 

I placed my palms over my rib cage.

My breath rattling as suppressed air

Susurrates in a cedar sprays.

Palash Mahmud is a writer, book critic based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His poetry, literary reviews and criticisms appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Mediterranean Poetry, Active Muse, League of Poets, Superstition Review, The Punch Magazine, Kitaab, Ephemeral Elegies, The Bosphorus Review of Books, Poetry Potion Trouvaille Review, Poet's Choice and forthcoming elsewhere. He read & reviewed for Sepia Quarterly.