Mirage, by Suchismita Karmakar

a 

doppel gänger 

of the blue bar above us, 

unfathomable cruising its veins, one might 

think that’s what Maurya’s sons saw and 

believed in when they abandoned themselves to the 

unknown of the sea. 

the unknown is a mother 

twisting her child's ear for hope is a child 

stealthily slipping away without accounting 

for the whys and hows and whens and the 

 guarantees that hope evades. 

a 

 meandering 

 life 

 that 

 scribbles  

illegibly. 

the sea is a desert a wilderness our life. 

life a Bacchic chimera. 

1 allusion to J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea

Gemini Janus 

strangles himself like Melpomeme and 

Thalia sparring in the eye, leading you and 

 consuming you  engul 

 fing 

 you 

 in their maw 

 a carapace you cannot thaw 

destiny is as 

unknown as a chimeric desert where you 

await a manna shower. 

their cackle sounds like a projection of 

your deeper id impulses since at the end of 

the day everything you see is what you don’t.  

a mirage of destiny. and how could you 

with a void inside licking the seams of your 

anatomy? a deficiency? or an excess of desire? 

the vacuum is a s n absorbing 

 u o 

 c i 

 t 

the phantasmagorical episodes of your 

dream through the portal of your eyes as 

the manna shower now corporeal tingle 

your aural senses with Inez’s words—

“You are—your life, and nothing else!”* 

* from Sartre's play No Exit

The poems have been written by Medusa's priestess. also known in the mortal world as Suchismita Karmakar, a postgraduate student of English Literature at the University of  Calcutta, India. she loves to hold everyone in thrall, casting her spell of a willing suspension of disbelief by her poems that have been previously published in the Otherwise Engaged: A Literature and Arts Journal, with upcoming publications in Zhagaram Literary Magazine (in  March), Viridine Literary and an upcoming short story publication in oranges journal. when  not strolling around the city in tulle gowns or reefer coats, she scribbles down feverish verses  by the candlelight.