<insert your name here> is in <uto|dysto>pia
by featured writer: Aditya Shankar
Aditya Shankar, <insert your name here> is in <uto|dysto>pia, digital collage, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
<insert your name here>
is in <uto|dysto>pia
Aditya Shankar | Dec 2021 | Issue 12
Do peep
Into the shower head
That just fell off.
See beyond
The grommet in the public lavatory
And the gunshots in jeans.
Watch the mouth
Of the word of mouth—
The urban wonderland
Lurks in the ordinary.
There is a flow
Even beneath this poem
That will someday drip into land.
Is it a river or a bottle of spilt coolant?
Is it the same old molten fire
That we all tread?
Someone buried
The trees and the warren
Into the mundane.
Another tree sprouts above it.
And another.
Who’s the full stack developer
Assigned to soil?
Who compiles the errors
In buried bones?
Into a better absence
Or a worse off sighting,
We clot into documents
As empty as a hovel,
Yet echoing the sea.
Aditya Shankar was born and raised in India. His poetry, flash fiction, and translations are in journals and anthologies around the world. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize multiple times. His most recent book XXL (Dhauli Books, 2018) was shortlisted for the Yuva Puraskar (selected by Sahitya Akademi). Shankar's other books are After Seeing (2006) and Party Poopers (2014). He lives in Bangalore.