by Shinjini Bhattacharjee
The anatomy of a mirror
is best known by the hands
it collects when they hold
a fistful of its sleek rhythm.
There is a white pressed
into snow that just sits
still and gnaws on
roots lit by sunlight.
Sometimes a heaven
expands its frame when
we least expect it and our mouths
are shocked into blooming.
This is what body means
when it breaks gently to enter
the silence of the bones and
learns to re-give only when it sins
Come evening, my body is
heir to brown ceramic birds
wingless enough to seek their doom
within the hunger of their cracks.
How the shards lead the blood
on my hands, heavy as the night
prayer that drowns in itself.
Shinjini Bhattacharjee‘s work has been published in Cimarron Review, DecomP, The Indianola Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Her chapbook ‘There is No Way to Alter the Gravity for a Doll’ is forthcoming from dancing girl press. She serves as the founding editor of Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal and Press.
A-Minor 