Kolkata Windows

Blinking A - N - I nocturnal
neon eyes dormant thru the day's
traffic ambiance

Men's voices up from Ave.
screams, drumming processions
drone of car horns

Pidgeons flittering at my sill
behind half-curtains
made of sunlight

My half-circle room of
2nd story windows more real than
the chaos of Kolkata

A voice thru the telephone
dancing celebration news broadcast
I pretend I live in this city

Where hot bath emerges fastidiously from
plastic bucket delivered
a 10 Rs. note

the 10 Rs. note her mother gave her
the last time she saw her
Raped and murdered on Puja night.

Newspapers daily arrival under doorcrack
fiction's dense foliage clearer than
the cacophony of the street

Unwavering description of a woman
gazing at her naked body in a mirror
noting her own bone structure

and my own image reflected
the clean coincidence of fiction of the
US-India Nuclear Agreement

rather than the unbearable puking
into refuse on coal-smoke morning
the stench of cooking

or naked in the dark bedroom
struggling to weep against
your own reflection

Hotel room is a chunk of America
embedded in Kolkata, in here it's NYC
and out there is India

The space between my window and dingy
gray walls of city is vast
I am high above the street

Stepping outside is the slight gasp of
stepping under cold shower
back into India

into the sunlight masses, clouds of smoke
beggars gently tapping my elbow
mocking my shock

Swept up into the sea of yellow cabs under
brilliance of windshield reflecting
Hoorghly Bridge