Srethsha Sen
ठरक
This time, you move in
for the kill. The bird’s neck wrung
wet in whine. Feathers petal
against our feet as hands so honed
they make blood sing, hard
& brown, tender our dinner.
Even flesh flutters a little after slaughter
before its heart can be in our hands
before it is simple meat.
Imagine—flight returned to wingless beast
sudden & swift in the face of you.
Imagine your arms reaching out for game
me: finally, a free hen running to roost.
Sreshtha Sen is a poet from Delhi, India, and a founding editor of the Shoreline Review, an online journal for and by South Asian poets. She studied literatures in English at Delhi University and completed her MFA at Sarah Lawrence. Her work appears in bitch media, BOAAT, Breakwater Review, Glass Poetry, Hyperallergic, Hyphen, and elsewhere. She is currently the BMI PhD Fellow in Poetry at UNLV.