Aneek Chatterjee (Voices Within)

Aneek Chatterjee is a poet and academic from Kolkata, India. He has been published in reputed literary magazines and poetry anthologies across the globe. His recent credits are: New Asian Writing, Chicago Record, Ethos Literary Journal, Shot Glass Journal, GloMag, The Stray Branch, Ann Arbor Review, Montreal Writes, etc. He authored two poetry collections “Seaside Myopia” & "Unborn Poems and Yellow Prison". Chatterjee has a ph.d. in International Relations; and he taught at the University of Virginia, USA as a Fulbright Visiting fellow. He also received the prestigious ICCR Chair to teach at reputed foreign universities.

Chocolate Square

they won’t allow me to the podium

so i climbed up a tree with great difficulty

i could have climbed the podium

with much ease; they won’t allow

the tree is much above the podium

much higher to me, my now forgotten id,

much higher …

the happy chairs look so small,

flowers decorating the podium look so plastic

faces of vibrant dead men are nothing

but surreal paintings

and the lady announcer

vanished all of a sudden

the podium invited me, why, i do not know

they obstructed my entry, why, i do know

happy chairs turned sad, why, i don’t know

plastic flowers appeared real, why, i do not know

why the lady vanished, i don’t know

why I climbed up the tree, i do know

#

my solace, my id now scanned the podium

my tired hands and legs instructed me

to stay on the tree

chairs look so small, and the podium

a little box i fancied as chocolate square

in childhood

chocolate chairs adults prefer

in a little box

Dilapidated Wall

The train that slowly moved

past a dilapidated wall,

pink flowers, suddenly took

a reverse gear

A boy surreptitiously

crossed a big whole in an

ancient wall to fish from the

black, silent pond;

pink flowers watching with

surprised birds and ghosts

And in winter nights,

the dilapidated wall crumbled

several times to allow dacoits

with big, primitive guns.

The boy shivered in fear

till the morning whistle

of the locomotive creates

a rhythm of safety

and silent laughter

Inside Out

Wrinkles on my face

are like unhappy lines of

a dry river bed.

They’re saying

I’m getting old. In every winter

breathing trouble ails me

& I’m unable to express my feelings

due to intermittent bouts of cough

Arteries & veins inside my body

are getting thicker due to trashes

gathered from society & flow of

oxygen to my heart is getting choked

day by day

But believe me, I’m young at heart

I still love migratory birds to adorn my gardens

I like mothers peeling oranges for their

children in sunny winter mornings

I like the tingling sounds of

uncertain trams sailing over

I play football with both

green-maroon & yellow-red jerseys

Long addas on cemented rocks

still rejuvenate me like a sudden

poem in the dingy, smoky coffee house.

Don’t look at my face

You may be fooled

Instead dig deep into my heart,

my young heart

I’m waiting for

a magic touch from you

to turn a dry river bed

into a flowing Ganga in search

of the magnanimous ocean

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Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020