One Poem by Debarati Sen

 

Icicle tears 

 

As I wear the scarlet letter as my monogram

my poems smell like blood drops on rust.

Carmine desires lay strewn across the mezzanine floor after a night of intense love-making.

No matter how much you try, you can’t sweep it off the next morning.

The blood-stained bed sheet will remind you of your moribund valour, 

crushed under the dizzying clamour of our differences 

The smell of your desires on my belly covers my body like the perennial shadows upon the foothills of the mountains. 

Your complaints hover inside my head like the lingering aftertaste of raw cocoa. 

Your cold stares pierce my heart like the sudden rain on a December afternoon

I scrape the snow off our conversations as time stands still, unable to move like a body inside the coffin. 

I wipe my icicle tears

As a cadence of silence enshrouds my existence. 

 

(The first line is inspired from Meena Kandasamy's book MS Militancy). 

 

Debarati Sen -Recipient of the ‘POIESIS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN POETRY -2023’ and the Sylvia Plath Women's Literary Award, Debarati is a  poet from Kolkata. She has published two solo poetry collections and has contributed to a few anthologies. Her poems have been published in webzines like The Antonym, The Yugen Quest Review, The Kolkata Arts, Lapis Lazuli, The Madras Courier, The Sindh Courier, The Piker Press, Chakkar, Kabitalive, to name a few. She has been invited by Samyukta Poetry and Women Empowered Poetry to read her poems. Debarati has recently been nominated for prestigious Touchstone Award for her senryu published in the Horror Senryu Journal.