"After the Market" by Leslie Lindsay
Mrityunjay Mohan | Birds Blue Birds
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a bird perches on the windowsill pecks at glass stained glass blue a body emerges from between the breasts of the waves bloated blue-hued bone-dust a wrinkle forms beneath each eye when i speak like it knows of my words before i utter them a procession of walking bodies a vigil held for the dead a crowd of birds fall from the blue sky bruised a rotten plum clutched in the beak of one when i speak words still in the garden of my mind each one a buried body beneath the soft turned earth in the bodies of the fallen birds secrets unfurl like words each one carrying a small life on its back to set toward rising sun in another plane the monsoon air aches in the hollow of my throat lets a cough continue for three months under the crimson sun a man sits on his boat and sets sail across the sea in search of fish i find a seashell buried between my toes worming its way into my flesh the bloated dead body in the sea double triple until the sea is closed off to the public after sunset a fish lost of life swims across my shadow on the coarse sand the boat is overturned the man is a bloated piece of history floating under blue wavering skin a decayed bird clings to the sky my voice sinks beneath my tongue unable to rise despite sweet words as if the sun could prevent their death on the windowsill a bird sits pecks at the stained glass searches its reflection finds the face of its fallen companion staring back instead
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Mrityunjay Mohan's work has been published or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Indianapolis Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Fourteen Hills. He’s a Tin House scholar, Lambda Literary fellow, and a Brooklyn Poets fellow. He was a recipient of the Nella Larsen Memorial Scholarship for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. He has worked as an editor at various literary journals. He’s an editor for ANMLY magazine, and a reader for Split/Lip Press, Harvard Review, and The Masters Review.
Leslie Lindsay’s work has been published in various literary and art journals, including: Up the Staircase Quarterly (cover art), Another Chicago Magazine (ACM), Wild Roof Journal, Spring-Summer, Brushfire Arts & Literature, The Closed Eye Open, Tiferet Journal, Mud Season Review, Western Michigan Review, Fall 2023, and On the Seawall, Model Home: A Study Under Compression, a photo essay in miniature, April 2023.
