Another Country by Priyanka Sinha


i.
Cradled comma, your body in bed
thinks desire as location –
separates nothing tonight
quick thought, sudden press
imitates the next door boilers
rhythm.
Passing car lights trace
with pale fingers, the map
of skin and hair,
this dark interrupted land
moves in layers above your
dreaming head.
*
Come together here,
Old Country, you;
as sounding wave
on rocks answers nothing
but its own sound, breaks
in moon-tide – breath like
surf falls
to the orbit of arm
and tongue.

ii.
I dream:
Woman on a bicycle.
turns to smile,
centrifuge of corners
moving her away,
wave of scarf
completes the turn
and turns again,
a curved arm sleep-circling
the space she might have filled.

iii.
Night sea, levels deep
sink, dream – unfathomed
in different rooms.
our bodies walking the
line of sea sand;
trapeze artists, limbs like brown
bark balancing the orb of moon.
*
here you become story of waves
unavoidable cadence of voice
caressing itself in hollow places –
this sea putting itself to sleep.
These reefs, familiar; knowing
their deliberate play with sound.
in these spaces of rock,
boomerang desire recalls a point
of departure, as if it had never left.

iv.
here dream-kelp
sorrow becomes quickened dread
eyelids beating fast as night skin
entangles sheet hands and dream
into the wake of receding
wave.