Tag Archives: urban life

Anushka Sen, ‘Good Neighborhood’

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Another poisoned squirrel hits the street,
stopping short your jaunty midday tread.
The city lays its secrets at your feet.
 
It rots more still and slow than fallen leaves;
the resting pose as definite as lead.
Another poisoned squirrel hits the street.
 
Classic mixup: rat for squirrel, bait for feed.
POISON, posters scold, PROTECT YOUR PET.
The city lays its secrets at your feet.
 
Someone went too far, we all agreed,
and left the vermin running wild instead!
And yet, a poisoned squirrel hits the street,
 
so stiff, so angular, no longer sweet,
the stare indecent on the outsize head.
The city lays its secrets at your feet—
 
you learn how light your step is, how discreet,
how intricate the alleys of your dread.
Another poisoned squirrel hits the street.
The city lays its secrets at your feet.

*****

Anushka Sen writes: “This poem was inspired by a rat-induced furore in Rogers Park, my Chicago neighborhood. Someone (or some people) had finally flipped a switch and started putting out rat poison indiscriminately. The poem takes off from that point. It seems relevant to me all over again, since I’m now encountering a slew of dead birds. Residential life is built on a gnarly underbelly.”

‘Good Neighborhood’ was originally publlished in the current Rat’s Ass Review.

Anushka Sen is originally from Kolkata, India and now teaches English Literature at Loyola University, Chicago. She is drawn to musicality, animals, and a strong sense of place in art. She occasionally translates from Bengali to English and her poems (original and translated) have been published in Rust and Moth the Asymptote blog, and Eunoia Review, among other places.

Photo: “Alvin? Alvin? Alvin?” by lionelvaldellon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Atavistic’

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Just past the new development’s array,
beyond the parking lot, the flowers, the fence,
the land becomes uneven, falls away
into an area of no pretence,
abandoned cars, some rocks, some weeds, a bog.
Here are drawn children and eccentrics both,
searching for wild flowers, or a snake, a frog,
to nature lurking in the undergrowth,
beyond the ordered asphalt, lineal law;
drawn by our lower brain of hunter, ape,
where food is found or killed and eaten raw,
life is survival, and sex may mean rape.
Bricks, debris, rubble, condoms, empty beer…
yet, strangely, life-long loves have started here.

*****

I subscribe to the Nietzschean view of humans as a rope stretched over an abyss, animal on the one side, posthuman on the other. I think the ape is very alive within us, as is the drive to reach beyond ourselves to something vastly greater.

This sonnet was originally published in Rat’s Ass Review (thanks, Roderick Bates) but I’ve modified one line here to match the photo I found for illustration.

Photo: “Vacant Lot” by Curtis Gregory Perry is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Poem: ‘City! Oh City!’

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Cities–once all smeared with grime,
rich but dirty, full of crime–
clear the excess cars and dust
if their governments are just,
house the homeless, and among
their cares: clean water, healthy young.
Gorgeous buildings grow and twist
through a river’s gentle mist;
trees in leaf for urban hikes:
sculptures, cafes, books and bikes…
children run wild in the park
till theatre signs light up the dark;
music spills from bars at night–
the well-run city’s a delight.

*****

This poem was published (in 2021 or 2022, the Bahamas Post Office seems to have lost my copy so I’m not sure yet) in The Lyric Magazine, Jean Mellichamp calling it “a breath of fresh air”. I wrote it to be an upbeat view of the modern world in contrast to a lot of the more worrying future issues that I’m often concerned with; and when I put together the ‘City! Oh City!’ Potcake Chapbook, I included the poem to balance some of the less rosy views of urban life–though my poem is nowhere near as skilled as the pieces in the chapbook by Maryann Corbett, Amit Majmudar and others.

Photo: “le quai river cafe on seine” by grahamdale74 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.