Shloka Shankar


Three Remixed Poems

Not Like This

Let silence be the symbol
that makes the future
bitter and intense—

your dream dissolving,
days when we were saved together.

It was then that something
like a smile slid across
what had previously been
just a face.

Cover it with a black cloth.
New constellations are thrown
close to the darkness.

If you knock on my door,
I may not even hear. Not like this.



Ten Thousand Spoons

Sometimes is never quite enough.
I'm here, but I'm really gone.

The sound of pretenses
falling around

two minutes too late.

I dissect everything today,
backwards and inside out,
consumed by a solitary chill.

But I can't help it.
I've never wanted something rational—
like ten thousand spoons
when all you need is a knife.

What it all comes down to is,
I like rain but only if it's dry.



Nuclear Sadness

I am tired of holding the sun
just before sunrise.

You keep seeing light where there isn't,
a shade darker than maple syrup;

what makes the world turn?
The weight of a swan's reflection
in a life of endless afternoons.

The city is a teacup that leaks us,
a jukebox of nuclear sadness.

Everything slowly disappears
in the clarity of winter—

stars as superscripts inside a room
filled with rusty conversation.

In this story,
I am your congenital darkness.


__________

Sources

Not Like This: a selection of poems by Anna Akhmatova, including All in the Moscow, And As It’s Going, The Call, Requiem, Everything, and I Taught Myself to Live Simply.

Ten Thousand Spoons: song lyrics by Alanis Morissette, including All I Really Want, Perfect, Hand in My Pocket, Head Over Feet, Ironic, and Wake Up.

Nuclear Sadness: select lines and phrases from Cat People (Scars Publications, 2011) by Kyle Hemmings.



Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from Bangalore, India. She loves experimenting with Japanese short-forms of poetry, as well as found/remixed pieces alike. Her poems have most recently appeared/are forthcoming in Bones, Right Hand Pointing, Carnival Horse, Shantih Journal, Drunk Monkeys, and so on. Shloka is the founding editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom.
 
 
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