In Isolation: Selected Poems
Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay
narcissus
narcissus, the hunter, the numbness
son of river, god, reflection of the water
time dies to the ground, comes back
from the bulb, let them eat, breadlines
but with a price, medicine or narcotic,
poison, protection—Camus' prophetic
plague, Bach’s sonata, Nero’s fiddle—
shame, thirst mirror, love in the trumpet-
shaped corona, grows a flower in its
face, in its greed, gold and white,
public enemy turned martyr, hunger,
doctored, death bed of seeds, of youth,
extinct or good fortune, a false spring,
no end in sight, gathering in the name
of self-salvation, single central leafless
hollow flower stem, late leader of
numbers, faceless, under ground,
living dead, hermaphroditic, bipolar,
Chinese New Year lucky daffodil
with no angel’s tears or soft hands,
and not enough soap to wipe clean,
narcissus poeticus, waiting it out,
poet’s narcissus, to sit and watch
cactus
a cactus becomes a home
for many things like birds,
a body a host, burrowing
i am glad i have no address;
you do not need a reason
to not come
a cactus can survive harsh
time, live forever, aware of
territory, spines as sewing needles
do not touch me, my summer
colored skin, like a blip,
your hands are flames
a cactus does not need.
death by water, like a camel
pricks as leaves, uneaten
there is no enemy, your history
books won’t help or hold you
people are dying but can’t sit still
el nopal can be eaten,
cereus peruvianus blooms
at night bred by bats
a peyote is illegal
euphorbia can make you go blind
monstros is mutation, a deformity
there was always distance,
an excuse not to call, collect,
do not touch me, deliver me
instead touch every thing you can
touch yourselves, or your brains,
slowly pick out the spikes
tomato
did you know
to grow another tomato
plant, you could root a
piece of one in soil?
the piece is called a sucker
and it looks just like its mother—
our tomato plant was a weed
growing in the sidewalk cracks
of the cracker barrel where we stayed
where the menu of a meat and three,
i did not think, had tomato and
thus been thrown out of the windows
everyone is a garden bought at the store
$19.99 and the promise of bloom
or bought already half-grown
we are all living the same life
like dirty water, injected with disease
spread like rumor, swollen by stillness
tomatoes are self-pollinating—
unlike people who do not know alone
amidst the garden
trying to make friends with the weeds
you have never planted a thing in your life.
until now:
juice it, red all over my fingers, bloody touch of seed and failure,
wiping them off on my shirt, still warm from the sun
home is heirloom, but
i never liked tomatoes until i got to italy
something about slow
beating us at our own game
our slim season, ethylene gas
turn green-plucked into money
at what cost?
distance turns space clean
cherry-picked, sundried,
mortgage lifter
La Tomatina the waste in our faces
heaviness
nightshade poison
free jungle or
borrowed time
without us, the tomatoes
would still be growing
in the cracks, tall as the sun,
bursting with fruit
Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay
Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay is the author of the books this is our war (Penmanship Press, Brooklyn, 2016) and everything is always leaving (M.C. Sarkar & Sons, Kolkata, 2019), along with her latest poetry album release i don’t know anyone here in 2020. An Indian-born poet raised in Nashville, she is a recent graduate of English at Belmont University. She was the first Nashville Youth Poet Laureate and the 2016 Poet Ambassador for the Southeast. Find her work in Poetry Society of America, Nashville Arts Magazine, and Connecticut River Review, among others. As a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, she is epic poem collage stranger and break-up with America tour—on self-imposed exile from New Nashville; she doesn’t know anyone here.