By Adreyo Sen

Man on the Phone

Unconscious he is that unconsciously

He is a thing of beauty,

One hand poetic elegance

As it addresses the air,

The other a bracket ended by slender metal

Transporting him to a world

Almost entirely imagined.

The street registers his tableau

With indifference. I pause, fascinated.

Then move on.

Mystery Woman

The night is a memory of forbidden silk.

It clings to my ankles

As I survive the day,

My male clothes imprisoning

My many selves and adding weight

To the feet that think they must have danced

In another life.

The Afterthought

I see myself small in a stranger’s eyes.

With each blank gaze, I grow smaller

Till I am less than an idea,

A thought forming at the back

Of a not particularly busy mind.

I become an afterthought to myself.

I do not realize my feet

Make a heavy impression on the sand.

Nostalgia Spurned

The tea seller at the park

Magnified by memory,

Shrunken by time,

Greyed by an artist clumsy with the lines

Remembers me after a pause painful

If only to me.

“Yes,” he says, “You lived here

Long ago.” Other customers approach.

He grows busy.

But I take home his pause.

It embitters my nostalgia

And proves strong medicine

Long overdue.

A Ruffled Intellectual

A man of bathroom profundity

Committed to the consumption wholesale

Of classics that also serve as doorstoppers,

He was perplexed to find himself hilarious

To a tiny serving girl.

In the great breadth of his character

Was not a single iota of humor.

He could not understand her.

He frowned impressively.

She laughed.

He wrote a poem about her.