Winged words by Amit Majmudar - The New Criterion

Poems

October 2012

Winged words

Burke

was right!

The downside to rising like this:
How the emphasis shifts from your legs.
They cycle the air at the outset,
then slacken, and finally trail

the torso’s relentless flexing.
Disuse for a month or two withers
them into mosquito whiskers,
and then, when it’s time to descend to

your fellow men and walk beside them,
you land and buckle in a grand
absurd kerfluffle, the satin tent

of wings collapsing over you,
real earth in the mouth
where ethereal used to whisper.

Amit Majmudar’s first novel is Partitions (Holt/Metropolitan) and his second novel, The Abundance, is forthcoming in early 2013.

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