Four poems from Bhaswati Ghosh's collection Nostalgic for a Place Never Seen.

You drown each taco in a habanero sauce that alarming shade of orange exclusively reserved for traffic

Your terrific postcard—that bloke swinging her / hips high to the harmonica, swindling / p.m. to a.m. My masala and sugar steep between / my thighs.

a boy had become pinned between a screen and a hard place            since then I only ever listened with one ear so I could hear it coming

Desire coats the room, his scorching tongue licks her dainty neck. Her wax begins to wither—blistering from an unwavering torch. Too consumed in blazing fervor.

Consider a distance measured in black wires or one in buoys, their slow dissonant arcs of red over the water.

I’m letting fish and turtles Swim to the edges of this coastal river

Ours was a space, gray amoebic and moss-soft.

The last time we met, he read me a line about how life is good though not fair.

Today, on the broken-tiles of your sleeping house, we are both in the clouds again.

She loved the sound so much, she did all the gutting after that. I enjoyed the feeling of washing the dishes,

Not a day goes by without the auto horns, Or the political instability, Or chai,

it’s not like you’re the one that got away— i let you go,                      i let you go,                                            i let you go

I spend the forty-five minutes warming up, front-kicking & later getting my back straightened by sabumnim on the hard-wood, eyes

I’ve developed an obsession with unabridged, rambling, disordered lists:

He sits cross-legged in the slant- light that cleaves a plane in the cave floor, a line that recedes with the sun

Round and brown, he hops amid the spikey chaos of salmon berry, tail upright, body shaking with what one ornithologist called

“Not even skin that sparkles should be shown, You Lilith.  You lady of the night, dancing like no one can see you.  Who do you think you are?”

And we two are caught once again between the thing and its reflection.

Chinook, the Snow Eater, drools.                Electric lavender shimmers                down its scaley silver cheeks.

But. The greatest poem ever written,  also must be a war poem,