PURE

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Punjab, India-Pakistan border 1947

 

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Whiskey moon. Wheels on the train track chatter like dice

in the cup, clatter like the teeth that stud the jaw,

long forked roots and little squares of pulp. Hooves

against hardpack once sounded a festival, blossoms of lather

about the bit, sediment at the bottom of his glass, grit

on his lip, then gone as the lost moments hoofbeat rhymed

with the bol drumming in his chest, scissor-shuffled

cards leafed sweetly in his hands, the black-eyed bibi

somewhere, waiting, rectified spirit gold and alive

on his tongue. Now wheel and rail flay splay filet

the world. He thinks of the sound the ground made breaking

under the gravedigger’s biting spade, of how the queen

of spades in his hand seemed to look back at him

with such knowingness, how her gaze split him cleanly,

as if he were a pure compound, how the striker left

his fingertips to slide across the boric acid powder

--slicked field of the board, the queen, soft red center

of the shattered carom flower, falling soundlessly into the net.

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BIO:

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Sati Mookherjee is the author of Eye (Ravenna Press, 2022) and Ways of Being (Albiso Award, MoonPath Press, 2023). Her collaborations with contemporary classical composers have been performed or recorded by ensemble and solo musicians. Recent work appears / is forthcoming in journals including Poetry Northwest, Gulf Coast and DIAGRAM. She serves on the Board of Directors of CASCADIA International Women’s Film Festival. Please visit at satimookherjee.com.