When does the moon turn full?
When I tell it stories of love.
When does the moon begin to wane?
When I stop speaking of love.
What do you look like in the dark?
A horned, lit, and petrified tree on a shore.
To whom do you turn when in pain?
Night Questions
About the poet
Sumita Chakraborty
Sumita Chakraborty is a poet, essayist, and scholar. She is the author of Arrow (Alice James Books, 2020) and the in-progress academic monograph Grave Dangers, a study of poetics, ethics, and death in the Anthropocene.
View profile & all 4 Poems / StoriesMore from Sumita Chakraborty
Basic Questions
What was the experience of death like for you?The fluids within my body failed to be held within my body, which, as far as I can tell, does not entirely differ from some experiences of life,
O Spirit
A bear brings forth her young informous and unshapen.I now wear the pelt of the conjured beast around my groin.
Marigolds
When I picture Robert, he is in the Public Garden,watching setting suns, like the ill-fated king, turn all to gold.
