Cement Wings
Dust motes twirl, heat oppresses, and concrete walls remarkably lift, seeking impossible…
Read more →
From Matchbox
Matchbox – October ’24
The Switch
A woman's remembrance of vibrant youth shattered by puberty's sudden, shaming, unmagical transformation into loss
October 15, 2024
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.
📖
PART OF A COLLECTIONThe Switch and 1 other poem
View Full Collection →
Paulami Sengupta
Paulami Sengupta is an editor and translator based in Kolkata. Her poems (in English 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.