Jonaki Ray

Verdigris
 
If I have to tell you
it would be the constants that formed him once.
The clean-shaven chin, the double-knotted tie,
the tucked-in shirt, the upright stance,
the gaze that hit yours square
like a catapult on the mango trees.
He still has his head thrust forward
but now, it’s for balancing the slouching spine
like the roots that bind a tree around
a crumbling temple wall;
his chin jellies
trying to remember your name some days but
he narrates his college romance like a Blues song.
No one told you that love is also this:
A father letting you leave him and be free
even when his world is disintegrating
like wood over-chewed by termites,
his hands sparrowing the sky,
forgetting that it is air that mixes age
into copper and humans alike.

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Jonaki Ray was educated in India (IIT Kanpur) and the USA (UIUC) and graduated with Master’s degrees in Chemistry and Computer Science. She is the author of Firefly Memories (Copper Coin, India) and Lessons in Bending (Sundress Publications, USA). Her work has been published in Poetry, Poetry Wales, The Rumpus, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Lunch Ticket, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, among others. Jonaki has been selected for literary festivals, conferences, and writing residencies in India and abroad. She has received multiple recognitions, including Pushcart Prize and Forward Prize for Best Single Poem nominations, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, and First Prize in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest, among others. 

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