Anindita Sengupta

Ways to Bring In The New Year

(1)

Face down in a dry bathtub, the chafe
of stillness on your skin.
Hold your breath and deflate.
Ignore the noisy dark
crashing around outside your door.

(2)

Walk outside in your underwear
into the chill December, under the clouds,
the cold sawing at your limbs.
Spread the shavings on the ground like confetti.
Lie down and seep through.

(3)

Plant a red scrap on your neighbor’s cake.
Call it conquest.

(4)

Dig up buried hatchets
      like a dog scratching hard earth. Sniff ardently.
      Patter up to the nearest warmonger
and add your grievances to the pile.

(5)

Pray to guns
like you sometime prayed to snakes
and storms: spare us our crops
and houses. Our factories and bars. Our stocks and markets.

Or pray, perhaps, for this : Let death be efficient.
not crouched, full of shame,
      under tables and beds.
      Let it come like a gust
of bay wind when it does. Strong and quick.