Bones like sticks, calcite rolls, bones underneath
intolerant skin and loose muscles, bones made of stones, like transparent lamenting through years of bed, stories of untold bones parched without wavering blood, of colloidal tendons and dead osteocytes, half incurred bones bowed, fishstick traced to a heavy load of fish played in water, kingdom of fish bone in this skeleton is a ricketed bone, traces of acids and wild ketones, shams of unhurt stones bones in famine wombs; trochlearis drilled & hanging moans, plays like dominoes, of overcast weather, bones floating in lame microgravity of retroviral cells, under rugged armpits like profit bankrolls, distilled blithesome of magnesite gravestones bones drying over hot Indian summer, like cut paper scraps, catacombs of roots layered in buttermilk, sour undertones connotations un-rocked to bottom of limestones, a hammering through centuries of dissolution, of bone fossils braided with a disease, hurting bones stalled on the cliff, bones--how we learnt it in the hospital white bones, why we loved you the most, and--the only memory of you that remains beyond the smell |
Ajay Sawant is the assistant editor at Southern Humanities Review. He is the honourable mention for Christopher Hewitt Poetry Prize 2021. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in A&U: America’s Art & Understanding Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Xavier Review, The Louisville Review, The Bombay Review, Paper Crane Journal and Rattle among many others. Ajay often tweets at @ajaycycles