LAGNAJITA MUKHOPADHYAY

semantics

he said it’s all just semantics anyway
there were always borders

i think about how he makes a living on word

clouds

almost like a swing
dancing in the corner

pulling up to it
adjusting
the moon

i think about how it felt to hold your hand but not love you
how you took your hand off my knee when this happened
but it was under the table anyways so no one saw
you put it there
like a secret

like a guilty pleasure

i am tired of arguing with people about colonialism
the way it was done, who it was done to, who did it,
who paid the price, i am tired, and there are problems:

how i never went looking for anything,
not love, not pain, not infamy,
and not the words to speak about it
how it makes a theft,
how it becomes who you are,
how the signs are always there,
and you spend

your whole life recovering

Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay is an Indian-born poet, musician, and anthropologist, and the author of the books this is our war (Penmanship Press, Brooklyn, 2016) and everything is always leaving (M.C. Sarkar & Sons, Kolkata, 2019), and poetry album "i don’t know anyone here" (2020). She was the first Nashville Youth Poet Laureate, finalist for the first National Youth Poet Laureate, and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her latest book Towards a Poetic Memory of Bengal Partition was out with Natyachinta in December 2023. She is the poet and bassist in the band JAWARI, whose debut album "ROAD RASA” has propelled them to the Paris Olympics and SXSW. With a Masters’ in Migration and Diaspora at SOAS and a Masters’ in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, find her work in Poetry Society of America, Tagvverk, and Anthropocene, among others.