Mid flight

    By Sanket Mhatre

    Bending over clouds
    We are dunked, face first
    Into the broken arteries of Kolkata:
    Dissected torso of a civilization, blinking back

    A vanishing sunset sprints
    below a network of lacklustre lakes
    suspended in time
    Green stillness festering in colonial wounds

    Our fingers trace her desiccated tributaries, desolate perimeters
    Brittle sentences from a lost fable breaking at the seams
    While miniaturised humanity rearranges
    its beginning and end

    A new story foaming
    At the mouth of its river
    Yearning for reinterpretation
    from citizens in the sky

    We realise
    Mid-sentence and mid flight
    are the same things
    spoken skywards

    Sanket Mhatre has been curating Crossover Poems ? a multilingual poetry recitation session featuring some of the most prominent Indian poets from multiple languages. Apart from this, he has also been featured at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Poets Translating Poets, Goa Arts & Literature Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival, Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, Vagdevi Litfest and Glass House Poetry Festival. His first book of cross-translated poems, Sarva Anshantun Apan / The Coordinates Of Us co-written with Rochelle Potkar has been released by Varnamudra Publications.

    Subscribe to our newsletter To Recieve Updates

      The Latest
      • Inheritance Burnt Side Up

        Shrinking to Fit: Women, Buses, and the Gendered Commute in Bangalore

      • Bulldozed in the Bus

        Shrinking to Fit: Women, Buses, and the Gendered Commute in Bangalore

      • The Invisible Orientation

        Girls Who Stray: Anisha on Women, Desire & Rebellion

      • The Matchbox by Usawa #08

        Preparing Silence, Normalising Everydayness & More

      You May Also Like
      • Ladies and Gentlemen Lunch is Served by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

        The well-groomed student Formal yellow jacket, white shirt black pants bow tie

      • Do you talk about me to your friends by Ann Torday Gulden

        This insistent Grandmother My Granny My father’s mother Dead for twenty years

      • Three Poems By K Srilata

        For eight hours, they search his house, help themselves to the bread that sits

      • Silence in the Storm by Rumi Samadhan

        mrudula kunatharaju’s solo debut ‘possibility of an otherwise’ leads us through