Crowstep
poetry journal
Grammar in a Worksheet
In a children’s worksheet of homophones,
An example is of a girl, filling sand in a pail.
I think of her now, she must have collected sea water for waking up her siblings.
She would have enveloped the edges of that pail with overheard elderly conversations.
Unsure of alliteration in waterscape.
Thinking, no article comes to fill, the seed like shape in a half injured shell.
Her curious mind investigating,
All prepositions are in and around the earth, not on water.
By this time, she would have understood
How inactive, a pail
the moon and a circle.
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Plucking a Song
Sleepless days are figs you see
I pluck one on right
tune.
Paper clean voiced technician took my arm to draw the blood in the lab.
His reflector style of locating vein
to draw the blood
his palpating finger
drawing C
of constellations,
in unripe closure.
I found being a garden of
unexplored herbs till this extent.
My arm, examined by him, hurt for a split second,
language, unlearnt like antiseptic solution on skin,
imagining the tallness or sameness of both fingers.
His non-alcoholic glance at the fragrant and drip like
Roots of my fingers.
Rooted I read
Anatomy of natural light
In an uncomposed image
Of triangles on body of water.
as
untold as
language
of fingers, clicked in a span
To breathe.
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Jyothsnaphanija teaches English Literature at ARSD College (University of Delhi), India. her poems have recently appeared in Quail Bell, ShotGlass, The Hopper, Mixed mag, short stories in The Bombay Review, articles and reviews in Kitaab, Cafe Dissensus and others. She is also a singer and a traveler.
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