The silence in the body | Devashish Makhija
You are the unseen howl floating up from a dark lane being ravaged by the wrestling stray dogs of my night
Five Visual Poems
by Devashish Makhija
you are the unseen howl
floating up from a dark lane
being ravaged by the wrestling stray dogs of my night
you are the cold blue light
that reveals the desperate lonely secrets
of a friendless room
to the flick of a switch
you are the handprint
left on a cold table by a moist hand
diminishing into shapeless ghosts
as temperatures turn
you are the scab —
the ugly healing of a beautiful blood-wound
you are the kiss
your kiss is a yellow ocean of abrasive sand
your kiss is a deep sky of knife-edged stars
your kiss is the anticipation of touch
is what’s left when a false promise brushes by
you are that kiss
the kiss that doesn’t follow me like a persistent cramp
in through the square black confines of my window
anymore
you are the kiss of a blade
my blood the red of your hunger
for my flesh
what you cut in silence you will eat in silence, deaf
to the thrashing of
my soul as it whips about
trying to leave my body through that tiny slit
the width of your eye when
it squints in my blinding angry light
you made that slit
to hear me scream, but I won’t, I will instead give you
silence.
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Devashish Makhija has researched and assisted on Black Friday (dir. Anurag Kashyap) and was the chief assistant director on Bunty aur Babli (dir. Shaad Ali). He has written numerous screenplays, notably Avik Mukherjee’s Bhoomi and Anurag Kashyap’s Doga; has had a solo art show “Occupying Silence”; written Tulika’s bestselling children’s books When Ali became Bajrangbali and Why Paploo was perplexed and a Harper-Collins collection of short stories Forgetting. He has also written “By Two”, a story featured in the omnibus Mumbai Noir; written and directed the acclaimed short films Rahim Murge pe mat ro, El’ayichi, Agli Baar, Absent and Taandav, and the full-length feature film Oonga.