By Anannya Uberoi
It pops out of
pink pods in this
flamingo circus. Stiff frocks
on girls, they don’t wind
but the wind flushes fuschia
on their blank faces and
one by one
their loose-held ribbons fall.
I know Siene is rose-rocked
and yet dip in my feet,
twirl into the stilted atmosphere
without a stopple
until I plough into nothing
but the upland air.
The girls put their
finicky hands to their mouths,
carnation crepes mushroom
in their awkward, tied-up hair;
their forms are like rubber
statues on candlewax,
cake toppers thrusting
into this thick-whipped façade
of joy, ambrosial joy.
Behind
the rainbow pelmets,
into wires and fixtures
of my collapsing Eden
the ant-sting caramel coat
of my lips,
and even with the juice
of burgundy leaves packed wet in my mouth,
I fall at last.
Anannya Uberoi is a full-time software engineer and part-time tea connoisseur based in Madrid. She is poetry editor at The Bookends Review, the winner of the 6th Singapore Poetry Contest, and a Pushcart Prize and Best of Net nominee. An avid traveller, she has extensively toured the Himalayas of Northern India, Bhutan and Nepal. Her work has appeared in The Birmingham Arts Journal, The Bangalore Review, The Loch Raven Review, and The Madras Courier.
