By Rochelle Potkar
Should I send you a dream because
all words
have offloaded from the last freight truck...?
A dream that jumps the earth's technicolor palette,
borrowing mixtures from galaxies of pixelated pigments
via the Universe—your postman?
A murmur through the sheets of time bending like space over the centrifugal force
of our kisses,
your tongue probing my mouth in an inter-galactic accident of mangled stars?
Our bodies aligned like a goods train, first train on track, a railway of dreams
gaze interlocking, breath interlocking, desire interlocking
as I bathe in your sweat?
Do you know how it feels under the canopy of your embroidered chest?
Your words both knife and salve.
Your words: gods, the elements, the stars who came down
to read the hieroglyphics created of them—
paintings on cave walls,
so life could come full circle, complete an orbit?
Should I send you a dream on the sleep of paper
of your intense gaze, the kindness of your smile, the generosity of your laughter,
my mouthfuls of your ear lobes - all the bread I could ever eat,
your undiscovered skin-territories like undiscovered words
waiting for my nose tip for eons?
Skipping to the beat of your voice wrapped over gentle approximations:
of love, a movie, an idea, a story or a new daydream—
a new room carved for another soon-day?
The way I have loved you is the symphony of my eardrums for
the bira of your being - a concoction of presence
un-clipped toenails: a work-in-progress
not because I had the stamina, as much as you the potential.
You will know only someday of a woman deeply in love
like a diary found in a landfill
in post-apocalyptic utopia.
But tell me—do I send you a dream?
This poem is from Rochelle Potkar’s soon-to-be-published third collection. An alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2015), and Charles Wallace Writer’s fellowship (2017), Rochelle Potkar is the author of The Arithmetic of breasts and other stories (2013), Four Degrees of Separation (2016), and Paper Asylum (2018). Her prize-winning poetry and writing, has been shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, runner-up of the Great Indian Poetry Contest, and winner of the Norton Girault Literary Prize. Her work appears in various anthologies and publications including Wasafari, Asian Cha and Chandrabhaga. Rochelle is working on her first screenplay, selected by the NFDC Screenwriters Lab 2018 for development. She will be a mentor at Iowa’s Summer Institute 2019. Find out more here.
The representational image is by Casper Nichols and downloaded from unsplash.com