MATCHBOX

Poems

By Paulami Sengupta

Photography by – Markus Wachter

The Switch

Thirty years back

my breasts galloped blindly

on a train rushing through cold fields.

I stood against the cautious yellow bars

dreaming of banana leaves.

Light vanished for a second,

a hot slap on the chest

kneaded puberty with shame.

My body unmagiced

the horses turning to pumpkins.

Cement Wings

Three books and a pen mirror purpose on the table; woolly balls of dust fly about like ballerinas; the sofa smells of urine and soap.

Heat sits on us like new uniform.

We have tea with medicines.

The building next-door takes off with cement wings.

Paulami Sengupta is an editor and translator based in Kolkata. Her poems (in Englis and Bengali) and translations have been published in The Dreaming Machine, Nether, Cold Noon, and Scent of Rain: Remembering Jayanta Mahapatra (ed. Ashwani Kumar, Red River). Her recent collection of Bengali poems (under the pen name Anjashi) is titled Bayosindhir Haraf (Boibhashik, 2021). Her first collection of poems in English, Maximum Love in Patel Nagar (Red River), was published in 2023.