From phrases in the keep
Envious Death watched the coffin. A tune played. The speaker resisted, then…
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From ULR
Issue 14 – WITNESS
jothi 7907 i see
Bulldozer's dust, cement's stark sign; sweet, forgotten flowers subtly tease memory's grasp for their name.
January 4, 2026
on october 21st at around 1730,
a bulldozer excavates dirt. and
a migrating flock of herons-
maybe-
flock around it.
a dusty plywood ramp,
propped against a four-foot
yellow wall exclaims:
ambuja cement!
jothi 7907;
by the crook of my left elbow.
hamid’s wife’s birthday or
auto manufacturer and license plate?
it’s october and the city smells…
sweet. of the flowers i can’t ever remember,
even though mom and i
take walks around here.
my tshirt sticks to my skin with sweat.
soles of my feet feel grimy:
with dirt and sand.
but my nose takes a short sniff;
Recognises the smell —
exhales quick!
ready to remember the smell.
afflicted with etiquette of taste
i take three short inhales.
mom is a little out of breath,
and she sings a little song.
sighing, I begin to ask her:
what are these flowers called again?
📖
PART OF A COLLECTIONjothi 7907 i see and 3 other poems
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Tathagat Chaubey
Tathagat is trained as a cultural theorist and sociologist. He writes about everyday things in a strange way. His academic instruction in ethnography and participant observation informs his poetry, which resembles fieldnotes - a constant bearing witness, a Flâneur-like quality perhaps. He has researched and written about identity, urbanism, nostalgia and migration. He has a B A Hons in English literature from Ashoka University and an MSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He admires A.K. Ramanujan, Nissim Ezekiel, Mary Oliver and T.S. Eliot’s poetry.