SREETANWI CHAKRABORTY, INDIA (Peace Poem)

Sreetanwi Chakraborty

The Giant Wheel 

They say the potential lady warrior on the billboard 

built the giant wheel 

to take us to London. 

Her smile is infectious, she moves the wheel

with almond-milk fingers, lacquered, 

manicured nails that showcase

dreams of the sky and orchid patchworks on frozen toe.

Children of cannibal father’s queue near the wheel 

to sing songs of broken cabins 

and gondolas with azure tattoos on the oar.

The giant wheel faces the tarpaulined cityscape 

pregnant with letters from unwed mothers of the war.

The children ascend the giant wheel 

of the Pushya nakshatra

As the warrior lady scoops out

Belladonna pods from the crevices of the amorphous soil. 

Days when you stopped calling

Words, phrases, sound of unspoken healing 

and termite-eaten mania of the sultry days 

healed me to consciousness. 

You were not there, you never were. 

You were the Buddha, Sujata’s Amitabha, 

hymnal chants orchestrating into my ashen body,

camouflaging tears on my altar

burnt-out camphor and incense sticks 

bought from the North-Kolkata dashakarma shop.

Evenings when you stopped calling, 

froze into a masquerade.

you smiled invisibly,

With an arsenal under your oversized cloak

and a cobra on a magnetic field 

Profile:

Sreetanwi Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in Amity Institute of English Studies and

Research, Amity University Kolkata. She is also the chief editor of a bilingual, biannual journal

Litinfinite. Her works have also been published in Ekdin, Uttarer Saradin, Setumag, Dainik Gati, The Darjeeling Chronicle, Darjeeling Times, POL, The Dhaka Review, The Dhaka Tribune, Outlook India, The Times of India, The Daily Bhorer Alo (Bangladesh), Muse India, Kochi Post, Kavya Bharat. She has been a poet and session moderator at the Chandrabhaga Poetry Festival. Her book The Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up: A Feminist Interpretation of Fairy Tales received the ‘Rising Star’ non-fiction award in New Town book fair in 2019. She has two sole poetry books 

Her latest work is ‘Rhododendrons’, a novella. One of her paintings has been selected by Sahitya Akademi as the cover design for Prachi

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Setu, September 2023 :: Peace Poem