ANANDI KAR - POEMS

Anandi Kar is pursuing English Honours in St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, India. As a young poet, she has already drawn significant attention of readers and critics. Some of her poems have already been published and some more have been selected for publication in some prestigious journals. She is also a content writer and has written a short story which has been turned into a play. She is the head writer of the popular page, "Feminists of Calcutta". She loves to sing, act and sleep. Kar was born on 19 May, 2001.

We Raise Our Voice To God
​

​They complain that
our voice in the choirs
ring out like untamed beasts.
Surpassing softness of chiming bells
like dirty horses in a race.
#
We don't lower our voice.
It rises and rises like a stony mountain
till it can reach to the place
where God lives.
#
The pain in our high pitches
cannot filter
through any known nicotine patch.
Our wounds are raw cancer.
#
Our churches might be white and pretty.
The ivy hangs like light from off their walls.
Our tambourine is soulful and all.
Yet, our God does not live here in America.

Dialling 911
​

​The telephone booth
stands there like my saviour.
In the setting sun of the last autumn,
I misread the vultures for white clouds.
My jaws reek of blood.
#
Before the snow could fall
like pellets from the grey sky,
beat the soft, weak ground,
I walk in.
#
By and by,
I also walk out.
I don't dial 911.
I walk out and
whisper  desperate, indistinct prayers
Dedicated to the stone statues.

Primacy
​

They call me a primate.
They don't know
that my flat nose can detect smells.
#
Don't you get fooled by this metal pin
that shines sometimes like a sharp knife.
#
They call me a primate
and through this flat nose
I can squarely smell their dead meat.
They remind me of violence.
I feel like puking
revulsed by the weight of
their bamboozling evolution,
their lowly sophistication.
#
Thank God, for I am a primate.
 

A Job That Is Not a Part of the Job

​You trample over the flower
that dares to cross your path.
You take it as a part of your job and
you do it
with every inch of your might.
#
Grind it like the
peanuts in a blender.
 
#
The flower does not yell with pain.
Its voice had already been aphonic
with all these years of despotism.
It wriggles like a worm
in polished apple.
#
You feel uncomfortable.
A hollow lump forms in your throat.
Yet, it is not enough to
arrest your beefy muscles.
#
After seven minutes,
seven steady minutes,
all wriggling would stop.
#
Its the end of your job for the day and
you go home.
Act as if nothing happened.
Make love with your wife,
laugh with your kids before bedtime.
#
But at midnight,
in your sleep, you can hear
the dead flower shriek
in the highest pitch on earth.
#
You wake up with a start.
The bedsheets get wet
with your sweat .
#
A strange thought crosses your mind:
sometimes when a man becomes flower,
the mountains
or sweet rivers that you know
don't remain breathtaking anymore.