They insist that her place is where soot sweeps the flagstones. Her limbs wince and grimace
all the way down the stairs. She can see them preening,
smug as ostriches;
But her fingers are still stiff, and
jewel-less.
As their excitement chirps louder, her swollen toes chime in the garden. And suddenly
there’s a sharp frisson of something in the air. She’s fizzing as if she were inside a coupe
glass, clinking against the promise of the glass-topped dressing table.
In her tight chest, excitement swells pumpkin, until
under the glitz of champagning chandeliers, she cuts a more confident stride.
In satin, she steps, and steps, until she’s a whirl of silvered windows, pearly;
yet threatening as teeth.
At the strike, she’s
seared
panicked
clenched.
She’s slipped
Down
Down
Down
Once again, her squeaking companions brush at the floor. Her ankles throb and ache
as loud as her heart.

Vita is life, our will lives in us,
Bee-ing outside increases our vitality.
Our will to live increases outdoors,
in gardens bright with blooms and dew,
flower to petal a tale is woven,
As we notice the circles and cycles of nature
Death is nearer, so we recoil a bit.
Nature’s beauty is there also to save us.
In the morning hue.
 
She, The Queen, A monarch
She knows her life-force.
As she sits in this sheen, a court convenes,
Her men toil and spin
While SHE flaunts her golden-violet rhythms
busy bee your tireless zest
dawn to dusk is collection time,
for her, translucent silken buds
glisten, wide arms open.
 
She drops her chin, drawing up nectar.
wildflowers flirt swaying in tune.
on a tapestry breeze, criss-crossing winds
sway the bottlebrushes who blush in an,
Australian blaze, humid thick.
 
They gathered their milk for Mother.
next to some wild carrots,
plump Queen sits, eyelids shut,
surveying though, each heartbeat of her hive
approval is met by vital signs alive, aligned.
In a wilderness cool, yet oozing warmth.
glory of life we see.
in both toil and freedom, we dream.
sweet in my mouth and thy Queen’s,
this jelly heals all beginnings.
and ends,
a rose sun sinks another horizon.

(Rain, Auvers, by Vincent van Gogh).
 
​His tears teeter a threat
 to spill, unsteady as the wobble of wounds and joy
within the same throat. Petals
descend in sunshine-
 
 He swallows hard; gazes out to the expansive sky, tilting his head towards the sun.
 
Crows’ feet never get to develop their splatter towards
his temples. Wings muddle
frantic
 
as petrichor mixed with suffering
caws and caws at him: so big
it fills up the whole horizon.
 
Hushed rainfall brings slashes of brief
 relief
 cut into canvases: Calm before the sting. He watches the cadmium rippling
 of wheat stems. They're swaying like shifts between disappointment and elation: vulnerable as humans
 
 like him.
 
He shutters insomnia-stung eyes. Such yellows against his lids are home: They beam, contrasting with incomparably fresh blues and sweet
twittering birdsong.
 
He longs for sleep.
 
 Sunflower-bursts in indigo
night.

Like birdseed, a sequinned
gown,
 
They would glitter them into the crowd each year around Christmas time.
 
 It was your smear- fingered -smile
 Little treat. We curled our tiny bodies into the ruby- lip
 slippered red
 of those opulent seats, sat tight as a bow. We savoured the buttons up…
 
Hush,
now let us
begin.
 
Slam
      
        Searing
 
 Black.
 
That gunshot
 spike
crack was the very worst sound of my life. I wanted to shred
shed 
 
wolf
peel
at my skin. Wings
battling uselessly into the wax of
lights.
 
You're a hunted animal. Fresh.
screams, fever, green
 gaping horror-mouthed memories
 bashing again and again and again and again at the walls.
 
Trapdoor.
Claw.
 
After a while, you know the hot scent
of desperation. It's the ugly, stubborn snarl of curled fag smoke.
 
If you want a light, you always, always, always have to ask them, even though you can hear them: their
crabapple
laughs
crackle,
 
vines
 choke at your ankles
 along the whole sterile length
 of the aisle.
 
Snare, trap, flare.
You're cored.
 
You can no longer bear the sight of them. You shrivel in the corner and lick at
your wounds.
 
Fawn and
Freeze.
 
Retreat, curl up and
Dry.
 
Eventually,
you don't even recognise
 your own white face. You are definitely not today
 
The fairest, fairest…
 
Each nightfall, animated eyes
 blare in this hunter's wood. They watch, watch, watch
Watch. Your hair witches with time.
You hold out your finger not for a ring, but for yet another bite
 
of heat and blood;
  Your body spread out on a slab.
 
 Be good
 
or they won't let you out…
 
Gasp down
 
 til you bloat
  leak
 and weep
     like a frog.
 
It's not real, it's not real. It's not real…
 
Now
 you're encased
into tall ivied
walls. What you know
 is that they long to return the lush butchered prize
of your heart.
 
who even is the villain
Anymore?
 
One night,
someone pads. tears at the plastic with fangs-
and there's that familiar sweet purple glint once more.
It's winking at you:
 royal
like a cloak.

Oh ! Love 
I give my warmth to the scaly hands 
Who crush my oven and spit on it 
Oh ! Love, 
Yet, I look at them with rosy imagination 
And they make stinky by throwing me into a pit 
Oh ! Love, 
I give my thorny carpet to welcome you 
Oh ! love, 
I give a sandy dream to build a castle for you   
Oh ! love, 
Yet, I do not know how much unscrupulous I am 
Oh ! Love, 
I don’t want to be pardoned 
Oh ! Love, 
I want to be burnt to be alive 
Into a pit of ash of rotten bed 
Oh ! Love, 
Give me nectar to be dead 
Give me hemlock to be alive 
So that I can rest there alone 
With the fire of atonement 
​By breaking the fundament 

About the author:
Partha Sarkar, a resident of Ichapur, a small town of a province West Bengal Of India, is a graduate who writes poems inspired by the late Sankar Sarkar and his friends (especially Deb kumar Khan) to protest against the social injustice and crimes against nature. His poems have been in different magazines both in Bangla and in English. Once, he would believe in revolution but now he is confused because of the obscurity of human beings, though he keeps fire in soul despite.

If sex were a flower head, as it is meant to be,
I’d respond to sunlight better than to rain.
 
If only I could convert the positives in life
to food but I’ve always gorged on the past.
 
Maybe you’d have to have been a child whose
father died to understand. You take what you have
 
and weave story cloaks from them. I’d be
a sloe berry, best picked after the first frosts.
 
Have you ever noticed that moorland plants  
carry on growing however often the mists
 
entangle them? I’m woody now, thick-stemmed
and when I sway in the wind I rage up a ruckus
 
before my fruits fall. See those moor ponies
with their unfriendly ways? When I sing
 
into the cold, they nestle against my shoulders
and breathe their warmed air with mine.

I have been asleep, what can I say?
I missed a few years, gliding in
and out of old nightmares, not always
 
night dreams. Sometimes
I’d daydream my way through months
before the screams would
 
force me back into the darkness.
Sleeping was better than being awake
and watching the reactions to
 
my twitching (how horrible to witness
yourself in a nightmare).
I hadn’t noticed it was twenty years
 
since I had had a thought, a real thought
that breathed in the air.
Sleep thoughts seemed so
 
convincing (I do dream in colour, don’t
you?) and the thought woke me
and I realised I was naked
 
(I always sleep naked, don’t you?
Well you don’t have to say, you
weren’t on display whilst sleeping)
 
and a fig leaf won’t do, not
after all these years, a fig leaf
doesn’t even begin to cover it.

‘Downe in the bottome of the deepe Abysse/ Where Demogorgon in dull darknesse pent,/ Farre from the view of Gods and heauens blis,/ The hideous Chaos keepes, their dreadfull dwelling is’ from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.

She’s finding the pattern in empty packets of crisps                                                                   
across the living room floor. There’s a river running
through a valley between mountains of pizza boxes,
a waterfall over rocks of scattered shoes. She’s
not going anywhere but here is the world in miniature.
One day (soon) she’ll gather it all up, put it on a boat
and sail this Italy and the Alps all the way to the tip. Then
the room will be the Gobi desert, lizards hiding away
during the day but chasing spiders and scorpions
 throughout the night. She doesn’t feel ready
for that yet, adds an empty sweet wrapper. She knows
you can’t step in the same river twice, and as soon
as the river meets the sea, there’s a reckoning. First
she’ll watch how silver foil glints in the midday sun.

    Beauty is a simple passion,
    but, oh my friends, in the end . . . —Anne Sexton

Do not doubt me.  Magic mirrors never lie.  And do not try to break me.  Magic mirrors never crack.  But you will reap the seven years bad luck just the same. 

Controversial though I am, most of what you see in me is just your own reflection.  Yet you are more transparent than you think, albeit rippled.  Indeed, I am no omniscient god.  On some days, cloudy skies shed no color on the waters.  And some pools are murky, bogs heaven-laden with frogs . . .  

In the end, I could barely discern her, the troubled queen, hidden behind her demon,  Arabesque.    

Lightning strikes where it will.  I am but an interpreter of shadows.  

    better a mile
    in ruby slippers . . .
    red hot iron shoes