Suchita Parikh Mundul

morning cups

each cup manufactures a new scene:
the ocean that is heard on a silent day
promises to be at the bottom 
of the last gulp, but does not appear 
no matter how voraciously I drown. 
the watery pale sky in the distance 
sometimes froths over, often deceiving me, 
portraying a cascading waterfall 
when all that exists is a desert of clouds
laying low and obliterating vision.
the world curves to skirt the issue,
still managing to manifest
the angularities it propounds,
often shrivelling into channels of beggary
where restitution is an oasis
only found in dreams. 
sometimes a child appears before my eyes, 
walking across plateaus,
but the footprints evaporate just as questions form,
and the opaque green of leaves
smothers any remaining trace, 
occupying the horizon and my mind 
with veins and arteries that trace ancestral ties.
in the very end, I look beyond
the holograms and mists,
shrouds and words, the here and not,
beyond all that is present 
in the world of momentary cups. 

writing

I feel the subterranean lull across the surface,
the nascent undulations in monotone,
the sudden seismic movements
escaping the fissure,
the spectrum meeting itself
at the point of refraction,
at the point of definition, 
at the point of orgasm…

just as reveries collect and crescendo,
just as they splay and glaze across eyes,
countering subterfuge, overpowering sight,
regurgitating a narrative arc that sings in throaty scores…

just as visuals fade and sound supersedes,
the essence supplants the fugue with ripples 
affecting, effecting

a creator and work,
artist and song,
reader and poet…
…forming a bond 
of consummate beauty.

Suchita Parikh-Mundul is a freelance writer, copy editor, and poet. Her poetry has appeared in Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, online literary magazines Muse India, Cerebration, Hakara, The Pine Cone Review, and in international anthologies. A collection of poems, Liquid Apnea, was published by Sampark, Kolkata in 2005.